One small step at a time, advocates of global government are pushing schemes for global taxation as part of the plan to mold the United Nations into a world government.

So you think you pay enough taxes? That your crippling tax liabilities to local, state, and federal government can't possibly get any higher? That the voracious appetite of Leviathan can't possibly defy political gravity any more? That liberal tax-and-spend policies have finally been discredited? Guess again. There's a new frontier of creative taxation these days that has big government hucksters in a lather of anticipation: international taxation. From taxes on international currency transactions to taxes on carbon emissions and e-mails, global taxation schemes are all the rage in the halls of the UN and the various think-tanks that advise them.

Global taxation isn't an entirely new idea; vague proposals have been floated by internationalist utopians since the late 19th century. Unlike other aspects of the drive to a new world order, however, global taxation has been a back-burner issue, at least until quite recently.

The Tobin Tax
The first and most concrete proposal for worldwide taxation was advanced by Yale economist James Tobin in the 1970s. Decrying the destabilizing effects of "excessive international ... mobility of private financial capital," Tobin proposed a uniform worldwide levy on international currency exchanges. Dubbed the "Tobin tax," it was intended to "throw some sand in the wheels of our excessively efficient international money markets" and to pave the way for an eventual "common currency, common monetary and fiscal policy, and economic integration." Although its proponents can't quite agree on how such a tax might be implemented, the proposal has continued to attract admiring attention from the internationalist set, especially since the financial crises in Mexico, Asia, Brazil, and Russia in the 1990s.

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