Robin Hood and the Laffer Curve

Monday, 17th May 2010

I've been assuming that Ridley Scott's interpretation of the Robin Hood saga must be terrible. After all, it's nearly a decade since Black Hawk Down, Scott's last properly good movie. But now AO Scott pops up in the New York Times to suggest, though he may not mean to, that the movie has something going for it after all:

You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

Alas, because it is a Ridley Scott movie even this probably can't save the movie even though this eminently sensible philosophical outlook is more nuanced than the cartoonish "steals from the rich and gives to the poor" mythology that dominates Hoodology.

Ezra Klein, alas, buys the notion that Robin was, as he puts it, an "armed redistributionist" and I think Jon Chait would agree with that interpretation too. But unless my memory is completely shot to pieces, Robin really is an anti-tax warrior inspired by oppressive levels of taxation that have enslaved and impoverished the people, leaving them with barely enough for themselves.

He doesn't "steal" from the rich, he confiscates money from the state (and its officers) to return it to the taxpayers. In other words, philosophically and instinctively, he's a Reaganite and, frankly, one would not be surprised to see Robin explain, over a haunch of venison, that if only the state listened to reason it might appreciate that the levels of taxation it imposes upon the peasantry are at Laffer Curve* levels and that productivity, revenues and happiness might all increase if taxes were lowered to a more reasonable, justifiable level.

Then again, can anyone sensibly doubt that Robin Hood would favour raising the personal allowance to £10,000? I think not. So perhaps he is, titter ye not, a Liberal Democrat. Maybe he would Agree With Nick too.

Even allowing for all this, mind you, it's impossible for Scott's movie to surpass the majesty and fun of Michael Curtiz's 1938 interpretation which benefits from all sorts of good things, not the least of them being the presence of Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. Russell Crowe is many things, including an antipodean, but he ain't no Flynn.

UPDATE: Spoiling the fun ED Kain has an eminently sensible take. What's the point of that?

*The Laffer Curve is not always applicable and many tax cuts plainly do not pay for themselves. But in the case of Robin Hood it seems reasonable to suppose that they might even before you consider the iniquity of the punitive levels of taxation levied upon the poor yeomen of England and the consequent increase in liberty produced by reducing this oppressive burden.

Filed under: Cinema (62 more articles) , Economics (59 more articles) , England (119 more articles) , History (463 more articles) , Movies (7 more articles) , Tax cuts (84 more articles)

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THX1138

May 17th, 2010 10:37pm Report this comment

'American Gangster' was okay, 'Black Hawk Down' was IMO just gratuitous war porn, you really need to go back to 'Gladiator' for his last "properly good movie".. But heck, anyone who made "Alien' & 'Blade Runner' will be a cinema immortal..

As for 'Robin Hood' the free market has spoken, $38M US Opening Weekend, against a alleged budget of circa $200M. The poor have gone to see Iron Man 2 and Marvel got a lot richer and Universal a bit poorer.

Ridley moves on to another huge pay day with his "Alien' prequel, but I hope he gets to make 'The Forever War' one of my fav si-fi novels (which has been in development hell, well forever) before the Blade Runner comes for him.

Fergus Pickering

May 18th, 2010 4:17am Report this comment

I'm sure you know the most important thing about Errol Flynn. Is Russell Crowe a contender? I think we should be told but I doubt we will be. The best Robin Hood was Richard Todd, the only English one I can think of. And he had James Robertson Justice as Little John. Twang!

Tom Burroughes

May 18th, 2010 7:21am Report this comment

Gladiator was a fine film, I thought.

A. MacAulay

May 18th, 2010 8:32am Report this comment

Many oversee the failure of Good King Richard's attempts at Middle Eastern diplomacy and his subsequently being held to ransom by some Euro-Thug Statists (Otto or Ludwig or something similar)as the cause of Hood's uprising. Prince John, in order to service the Public Debt, de-regulated tax gathering by farming out concessions to feudal bankers like Nottingham in return for party funding. John was a hell of a guy with scandalously expensive tastes. He also made the mistake of setting interest rates too high which made it impossible for Robin to get a Small Business Loan which is why he and his Merry Men ended up unemployed in the woods poaching the King's deer. Everything went downhill after that. Richard returns after having promised Otto or Ludwig that should they ever go bankrupt, England would pick up the tab.