Dan Djurdjevic

The idea for a tax levied automatically on all financial transactions first came to me in the early 90s. I was drawing my first salary after university - and dreading completing and filing complex tax return forms. At the same time, the dawning computer/internet age had made such a concept technically feasible for the first time in history. Today, this tax concept is most commonly known as the " Automated Payment Transaction Tax " or "APTT" - a term coined in around 2005 by American economist Professor Edgar L Feige - or just the " transaction tax ". As many of my friends will recall, I championed this tax concept for some time for all the reasons Professor Fiege mentions in the above link: the APTT provides a naturally progressive and "fair" taxation regime, requires very little administration by anyone (the "automated" nature means no one would have to file a tax return ever again), captures a very large tax base and functions o...

Introduction I must say at the outset that I approach this topic with a great degree of reluctance and caution. I once went to a pub that had a sign forbidding discussion of politics or religion; this is presumably because both subjects are fraught with potential for hostile argument – argument that usually cannot be resolved (at least, amicably!). People tend to have a large emotional investment in their political and spiritual beliefs and any disagreement relating to these beliefs can "cut close to the bone". So the conventional wisdom is: "Don't go there." And yet I will "go there" – at least in relation to religion. Why? For this simple reason: to explain my worldview. I think I can do this without disrespecting others – including many of my friends and family who are religious. After all, one can fail to be convinced by another person's religious reasoning without finding fault with the person. The two do not need go hand-in-hand...

Introduction It never ceases to amaze me how some people think they can prove the existence of a God – any God, never mind a particular kind (Christian, Muslim, Jewish etc.) – through the mere shuffling of some words on a piece of paper. It's as if the incessant buzz of indifferent life, the imperceptible creak of tectonic movement, the whirling of the planet through space, the furious solar storms on our sun, the vast spans of silent emptiness between trillions upon trillions of isolated worlds, the birth and death of stars and galaxies – all of it is somehow expected to stop, bend on one knee and acknowledge a trivial (frankly, pathetic) gesture by some transient life-form on a rocky planet tucked away in a rather nondescript corner of the universe. It's as if such a gesture could somehow elevate just one of many hundreds of thousands of unsubstantiated, pre-scientific cosmologies that have, and will continue to be, believed on our little world; a planet where life h...