By Richard Billies of AllThingsPoliticalToday.com

I bet that you haven’t heard much about this new United Nations Global Tax plan. That’s because Barack Obama and his left-wing allies don’t want you to know about it. Remember: if the left told the truth at election time, they’d never win the majority of contests. Some of the U.N. proposals are really extreme but these latest ones seem to be the most extreme.

The United Nations has attempted this before. There have been proposals for global taxation before but all of them have been ignored by the member nations. In 2009, they proposed a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online. The plan was introduced by the World Health Organization and it was slated to raise tens of billions of dollars from consumers.

The WHO then proposed to use the money to pay for the transfer of drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities to the developing world. The leaked December 23, 2009 Executive Board report of The WHO’s Expert Working Group on Research and Development Financing cites a number of ideas for global taxes that could be imposed on UN member states that “could potentially raise very significant amounts of revenue”:

• A 10% tax on the arms trade, which might net about US$5 billion per annum
• A digital tax or “bit” tax: internet traffic is huge and likely to increase rapidly; this tax could yield tens of billions of US dollars from a broad base of users
• Brazil’s financial transaction tax: a tax on bank account transactions, set at 0.38% levied on paying bills online and major withdrawals, it was raising an estimated US $20 billion per year and funding some 87% of the Government’s key social protection programme, Bolsa Familia, before it was voted down.

Nothing came from these proposals but never underestimate the determination of government functionaries when billions of dollars are involved. The U.N. administrators have bided their time while they worked the room, so to speak. This past February, they reintroduced their global tax that would help fund “social protection” and international services for those in need.

To combat these ills, on Jan. 31, a special committee of civil society leaders convened at the U.N. building in New York City for “The Civil Society Forum”, a preparation conference for the U.N.’s 10-day Commission on Social Development (CDS) forum (which started Feb 1).

The forum’s focus was on ”universal access to basic social protection and social services.” The basic elements include health care, primary education, housing, sanitation, water and other related elements that human beings require — or crave — for survival and social viability.

Now, no one is opposed to the essential goal of the forum but how would such a massive undertaking be funded? Why, by a global tax. Jens Wandel, the Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Program, explained: “We will need a modest but long-term way to finance this transformation. One idea which we could consider is a minimal financial transaction tax (of .005 percent). This will create $40 billion in revenue.”

But as we all know, a small tax now could become a bigger tax later. The U.N. is banking on the theory that gradual global taxation would slowly expand. Once the camel’s nose is in the tent, pretty soon the whole camel is there.

The United Nations has moved along with their plans. The much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, is scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23. And surprise, Barack Obama’s administration is supporting it. The current administration has never met a tax or fee that it doesn’t like.

The proposals from this conference are breathtaking in their scope. Among them are:

• More than $2.1 trillion a year in wealth transfers from rich countries to poorer ones, all in the name of fostering “green infrastructure, ”  “climate adaptation” and other “green economy” measures.
• New carbon taxes for industrialized countries that could cost about $250 billion a year, or 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, by 2020. Other environmental taxes are mentioned, but not specified.
• Further unspecified price hikes that extend beyond fossil fuels to anything derived from agriculture, fisheries, forestry, or other kinds of land and water use, all of which would be radically reorganized. These cost changes would “contribute to a more level playing field between established, ‘brown’ technologies and newer, greener ones.”
• Major global social spending programs, including a “social protection floor” and “social safety nets” for the world’s most vulnerable social groups  for reasons of “equity.”
• Even more social benefits for those displaced by the green economy revolution—including those put out of work in undesirable fossil fuel industries. The benefits, called “investments,”  would include “access to nutritious food, health services, education, training and retraining, and unemployment benefits.”
• A guarantee that if those sweeping benefits weren’t enough, more would be granted. As one of the U.N. documents puts it:  “Any adverse effects of changes in prices of goods and services vital to the welfare of vulnerable groups must be compensated for and new livelihood opportunities provided.”

Sound familiar? Some of these changes are the very same things that Barack Obama has proposed for the United States. They are the basic ‘share the wealth’ plans that the left has proposed for decades without success.

The Soviet Union failed with the ‘worker’s paradise’ concept. China is more entrepreneurial than communist today because the old system didn’t fit their society. The European Union, with its massive social programs, is sliding into an economic disaster. Why does the U.N. think that their plans can succeed? Perhaps, because they don’t really think that this will work but they will get boatloads of cash to play with.

If you don’t believe it, you can read the executive summary right here. In essence, the United Nations is pressing for a ‘world government’ with the elimination of national sovereignty.