What I thought. Your critique of the FTT has nothing to do with the size of the tax and instead opposition to it. Leaving aside your critique of Tobin (did anyone every claim he was not pro-capitalist) your complaint is that it would stabilize the system! Yes it would! Not a great deal, but a bit. A small sales tax (less than 1%) on the sale of stocks and bonds and other financial instruments would reduce leverage (gambling with other peoples money), bubbles (where paper assets sell far above their underlying bubble) and volatility - where prices of such assets rise to higher peaks than otherwise and fall to lower lows. Such a Robin Hood tax would eliminate none of these things but would reduce them. And every one of these things hits working class and middle class people far more than it hits the rich.
And unlike many Wonkish things it can be explained in a sentence or two. People have no trouble understanding that just as they pay a few cent in a sales tax when they buy a pair of socks, the rich guy who buys stocks and bonds and weird derivatives should have to pay a bit. And they have no problem understanding that when such financial instruments are traded hundreds or even thousands of times the trouble that they can cause is multiplied compared to someone buying and holding them. :We have a set of gears that people tend to get caught by, and ground up in., Throwing a little sand in those gears so they can't move quite so fast and there is a little more time to doge is a good thing. Yes, the ultimate goal is replace those gears with something that does not grind our bones to make the bankers' bread. . But a demand for sand in the gears, buys us a little time and also is a great way of pointing out where those gears are and who owns them. There is no telling what demands will be the basis for a popular movement until it happens. But a Robin Hood sales tax on financial transactions is certainly a candidate to be one of those demands. Plus it counts as a progressive tax in the classic sense alongside income and wealth taes. The richer you are the more you pay, both in absolute terms, and as a percent of income. Most of the working class (especially the poor) will never buy a single financial instrument. Prosperous workers and the middle classes won't buy many, and are better off not churning their assets constantly. It is only capitalists (and even then big capitalist more than small) who can will buy high volumes of financial instruments and churn them constantly On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 5:00 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > "Gar Lipow" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > The proposal uses fairly standard percentages recommended by economists. > > The revenue is a happy side effect. The main point of the tax is to > reduce > > leverage, bubbles and to some extent volatility. If you don't agree that > a > > financial transaction tax is a worthwhile way to accomplish those goals > then > > say so. But I can't see how one can intellectually support the idea of > such a > > tax, but see the size as too large. In any theory in which a transaction > tax is > > a source of stability rather than merely a means of raising revenue, the > size > > if the proposed tax is on the conservative end of what is normally > proposed for that purpose. > > http://www.marxist.com/Europe-old/tobin_tax_and_ATTAC_400.html > has a Marxist analysis of the tax. > > There are better approaches to taxation than a FTT. > > -- > Ron > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com
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