A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
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Commercial Banks would then have two separated responsibilities: retail and investment banking. There
would be 1) High Street banks providing and competing for the bank account services needed by citizens,
shopkeepers and businesses and 2) Investment Banks providing corporate funding and investment service
which, as has been shown, can be incompatible with reliable, solid “boring banking” providing a safe place
for people’s money transactions and current accounts.
The benefits of these changes would be:
1. Reducing the cost of public investment projects such as hospitals, schools, and affordable
housing.
2. Providing the urgent and massive government support needed for greening the economy,
providing infrastructure for electric vehicles, railways, tramways and cycle lanes and the
enormous cost of retrofitting the majority of UK housing stock to meet the goals of the 2008
Climate Change Act.
3. Further new jobs and support for a transition from a brown to a green economy.
4. Addressing the current economic crisis without incurring further debt.
A further development, recalling the situation in Victorian times, would be to encourage local economic
development through institutions such as local banks, community development banks, credit unions,
investment funds and monetary initiatives like the Totnes Pound initiated by Transition Town Totnes to
encourage purchasing from local retailers and businesses, Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) which are
beginning to support local economic activity and trading. The Grameen Bank supplying micro credit to rural
women in Bangladesh is a well known example, and there are similar schemes in Africa.
For further information, see Money - Past, Present & Future.
Reform of the debt money system is at the root of the global environmental crisis. It needs to be on the
agenda of the next UN Summit. I urge you to campaign to get it on the agenda. Use this chapter as a
resource.
Part 2 – Taxation
“Perverse” Taxation
Under the current system for raising public revenue, taxes are “perverse” in the sense that they do not
sufficiently encourage “good” contributions to society such as sustainability, enterprise, work, healthy food,
including organic food. Taxation that encourages green demand would help prevent recession induced
cutbacks in green initiatives (such as BP’s solar energy enterprise).
“Perverse” taxation encourages unsustainable practices such as creating pollution, using up non-renewable
resources, cheap products including poor food that create social costs. Once again we see the failure of
pricing to reflect the full costs to society of so-called “cheapness”. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier in Part
1, wealthier people pay least proportionately and can afford expensive advice and help with a complicated
and inaccessible system. Taxes bear down on middle income but especially poorer people.
To sum up:
By heavily taxing employment and rewards for work and enterprise and lightly taxing the use of
common resources, income tax systematically encourage inefficiency in all kinds of resource use -
under-use and under-development of human resources, and over-use of natural resources (including
energy and the environment’s capacity to absorb pollution);
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