Our Economy Could Be In Surplus In Less Than A Year With A 1% Wall Street Sales Tax

Originally posted by JackBauer
I see a problem with this. (well other than it's a tax, which is inherently bad) It gives the government the green light to massively expand itself into every corner of the globe. The whole reason the government has a "budget" (well did have.. ha ha.) is so that they live within their means. If they know they can take from the people whenever they want to complete their goal, not only will they constantly take year after year, but there will be no restraint on their size.

Giving the government more money to sustain its huge size or possibly make it bigger is the biggest mistake one could make.

And just why are taxes 'inherently' bad?

inherent |inˈhi(ə)rənt; -ˈher-|
adjective
existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute : any form of mountaineering has its inherent dangers | the symbolism inherent in all folk tale

As soon as humans came together in groups there was some sort of 'tax' levied on individual to provide for the well-being of the group, be it in the form of labor, goods or other special commodities.

Second, and I don't know why people refuse to understand this one: Government is not that big - in proportion to the population. It may be numericlly larger but it is serving a much larger consistuency with fewer workers. When did you try to reach a member of a regulatory body? Could you even get through to a person that could answer your question? Did they even pick up the phone? At Federal, State and Local levels over the past 30 years the service to 'THE PEOPLE' has been declining because of this 'government has to run like a business' mentality. I'd like to see the lines at the DMV shorter - hire more workers. I'd like road repairs and building go faster. I go by Highway projects that sit for days without any work being down.

Whatever you may think of FDR - his public works projects put people to work and stimulated the ecomony. It gave people hope and THE PEOPLE some of our greatest accomplishments.

Originally posted by bjax9er
why is taxing the only answer to democrat failures?

You give them an inch, and then they want another inch, and another, and another endlessly at hard working Americans expense. Take from the productive and give to the unproductive until we are bankrupt. Well I think that point was here a while ago and we are living on borrowed time. They (The Liberals) used it all up, and then some. It's time to pull the plug. It's time to cut spending and if anything, cut taxes to get the economy growing. This big government thing is starting to look like the Evil Empire. Drones to monitor US citizens, FEMA Camps, billions given to foreign countries when we can't pay our own bills, declining US job market, a worthless dollar, and a vice president that spends half a million a night on hotels alone? Are you kidding me? As Rand Paul said, you have to understand the problem before you can do anything about it. Both Democrats and liberal Republicans are a complete FAIL when it comes to protecting our Constitutional rights, our people, and our country. The question is how bad does it have to get before people wake up?

Originally posted by FyreByrd

Originally posted by JackBauer

And just why are taxes 'inherently' bad?

inherent |inˈhi(ə)rənt; -ˈher-|
adjective
existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute : any form of mountaineering has its inherent dangers | the symbolism inherent in all folk tale


Whatever you may think of FDR - his public works projects put people to work and stimulated the ecomony. It gave people hope and THE PEOPLE some of our greatest accomplishments.

edit on 23-3-2013 by FyreByrd because: (no reason given)

Taxes are inherently bad because it's theft! Plain and simple, if money you earned with your labor is taken against your will, it's immoral, and it's stealing!

FDR didn't stimulate the economy, he slowed the recovery! FDR, and those who think like him are responsible for the mess we are in today!

If corporations are considered people via the "Citizens United" decision, shouldn't investment firms that are corporations pay taxes? If they already do, I stand corrected.

In a way, I feel that the sentiment should be, "If you want to do business/trade in the USA, you need to pay a fee".

No one should 'play' for free.

I certainly can't.

I can't play for free, and I'd even be willing to pay a 1% tax on my 401k if I knew every other investor was too.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by neo96

 

People do need to open their eyes fiat currency.

If it's fiat then why complain about taxing it? Especially a tiny 1% tax.

Uh, because taxing and spending has destroyed the worlds economy? It's never worked before, why would it work now?

www.dailyfinance.com...

reply to post by Kali74


Tax this tax that! WTF We need to re-engineer the way we think and get out of that habit of tax to make income. Why not instead do this don't do anything that doesn't create income. Stop giving away the farm with assistance for this and subsidies to that. Treat it like a business and if it doesn't create income don't do it. The business/government makes money as opposed to just giving it away!

Wait, how about we eliminate interest paid by anyone with a current interest accruing loan out to 30 years?

If Abrahamic law is to not usury, then why not go back that for a bit? Maybe it'll help stabilize things, and eventually make the rich even richer.

Poor people don't make rich people richer, people with money make rich people richer.

reply to post by jacobe001


You just told me the police are there to keep the citizens in check....now you are telling me that they are controlled by the FBI and that they are bought and sold to protect the evil bankers.

Well this is a conspiracy site and you have just postulated a theory.

Never mind that OWS deliberately baited the police with their various tactics which were designed by professional protesters to draw conflict.

Originally posted by xstealth

Who cares how much he is worth? The problem is double taxation, it's criminal on the government's part.

An estate worth over 5 million doesn't mean someone is rich, maybe they have a 10,000 acre farm and generate a modest living off the livestock and land. Regardless, rich or not, it should not be taxed again since the income to buy it was taxed in the first place.

Seriously, follow your logic through.

What percentage of Americans have over 5.25 million after their death? Less than 1%.

Don't we all see problem in people gaining off other's hard work?

It's the same principal at work here.

What percentage of this less than 1% is in the situation you assume

has over 10,000 acres, and can't get by with but 5.25 million. not only that, it can still be much more, it's just that it begins to be taxed after that amount.

Seriously, you're either not thinking this through, else are a shill for the high elite.

I trust it is the former.

Has anyone here actually traded in the stock market????? This post as well as most of the replies, sorry to say it, are completely and utterly uneducated and wrong. Such a tax would destroy the stock market, stop all trading except for the very long trades, dry up all liquidity, prevent you from getting loans, etc and tank the entire economy. Sadly if the majority were able to make such laws, they would destroy themselves from ignorance. You all see this big cash cow but don't realize that by taxing it you will be killing the cow.

What I'm about to explain is not exactly how it is but close so you can understand. Let's suppose I have $100,000 (to make it easy) to day trade with. If I traded it all at once, using margin (I can borrow), I would actually have almost 400,000 to trade with if buying (wagering it will go up) and not shorting (wagering it will go down...complicated but you can't use as much when shorting). I wouldn't risk all of that at once, but it will help in this example to do so to illustrate. Suppose I trade the full amount on the S&P500 index corollary etf fund called "SPY" at around 154.75 and sell it ten minutes later at 155.02. That is a gain of 0.174% but because of margin I gain 4 times that or about 0.7% (but if I was wrong I would have lost 4 times as much) and on $100,000 that is a gain of $700. Now what would the transaction cost of 1% be on $400,000? $4000. So I make $700, pay a transaction fee of $4000 and am now in the hole $3600, not including the friction loss (cost of trading, etc.). Even if the transaction tax were on the $100,000 before margin then I lost $300 ($700 - $1000 = -$300 !!!!!

And traders don't win every time, not even the banks. In fact, very good traders win only about 60% of the time. So how would you like to pay a transaction tax also on the 40% of the time when you lose 0.7%, making it a grand total of -$4,700 or -$1700 net for the trade?? And this is all an oversimplification. Many traders will gradually buy into a stock and gradually sell it as well.....many transactions that make up the same 0.7% profit (in this hypothetical example that depended on a perfect trading signal at the particular time). But the same thing applies to the big banks. They just do it even faster and far more complicated trades. Most of the big banks trade with computers at super high speed, over and over and over.

The whole idea of a transaction tax is completely absurd. If there was a transaction tax of that size, the whole thing would come to a screeching halt, and there would be no transactions to tax. You would stop all of that....the big guys who do probably 80% or more of the trades and also us little guys, you would stop us as well. I would have to look at only trading very long term....like weeks to months so that I only have a 2 transactions (a single buy and sell) with a gain (hopefully) that outweighs the transaction tax. Or I would have to look for even riskier things to trade but those are harder to trade, to predict, and are less liquid (harder to buy in and out of), etc (way harder to trade). So you essentially shut down the stock market. The only thing that makes sense is the capital gains tax. At the end of the year, after I have computed losses and wins and eeked out a small profit, then you can tax it. Don't tax the method but the final result.

Such questions should not be left to the average American, and definitely not the average politician!! It is like the average American making delicate brain surgery decisions or even incisions, thinking they know as much as the surgeon. Most of us know nothing about it. Here is a perfect example. In the 90's, the govt taxed luxury yachts to try to collect more money from the rich. Well, it didn't work as intended. The rich simply spent money on other things and the people that made yachts and worked for these companies all suffered with lost income and jobs!

With regards to the start of the OP's thread title 'Our' .....stop been so bloody god dam ignorant! Believe it or not, not everything evolves around the flipping glorious United States you know!

reply to post by jon123


Ok so by your own admission here you HAVE 100,000 to spend but your spending
400,000 and you want me to feel bad that you would loose money, that isn't yours,
to make this trade, basically gambling with another persons money, not only
that but the great depression itself was in large part because they allowed buying
on margin..... so you think its ok to gamble with others money so long as you
do not have to pay a tax that might even encourage those in the stock market who
feel its ok to gamble with HUGE sums of money that does not belong to them
via buying on margin to act responsibly, make long term truly viable investments
and be much less likely to take this margin as it would up the risk factor even
more since they would have to pay the tax on all of it........

You would rather us see them continue the way it has gone, making huge gambles
on margin so they can get rich quick and then bail...... yeah sounds about right for
the legal casino they run there...... and we think it will all be ok lol we haven't even
learned our lesson from the 1920's.

reply to post by bloodreviara


I wasn't commenting on the morality of the stock market, nor did I say I have $100,000. I was trying to explain it so everyone would understand the consequence of a transaction tax at 1%. The market greatly reducing trades would negatively impact everyone in the world greatly (not just those in the market) and there would be very few transactions to tax after it is implemented. A one and done.

1% tax for the 1%.

I'm no 99% vs 1% supporter usually, but in this case it makes sense, tax wall street 1%, the tycoons wouldn't even notice the missing money, well, the extreme tight wads would notice, I'm surprised this tax doesn't already exist.

The middle class have been crushed, the lower class have been crushed, the upper middle class have been crushed, every single class excepting those who trade on wall street have been crushed.

Sounds too simple to work, it's the type of thing someone would have to Sen. Rand Paul style filibuster for to work, and it would only work after the people got behind it, this isn't a sign saying 'we are the 99%', it's a sign with a specific message, something occupy wall street never had, I'm for it.

So what, go ahead and tax them 1% - eventually with gross overspending you will spend that as well. It is the same thing over and over again, the right will say cut spending while the left will say increase revenue. Until people realize you need to do both, nothing will change.

But I am all for taxing the hell out of the uber rich - the 0.01%, they are the ones who lobby (own) government to deregulate, the ones who manipulate the markets to steal from us all. (but you still will need to cut all these social programs the government has no business being in)


(and the economy being in a surplus, hardly - the banks have hundreds of trillions in the derivatives market, that is a ticking time bomb that sooner or later will go off and take the entire system with it)

reply to post by jon123


I get that part, i didn't mean to affront by saying you, i was simply using
your example to point out
how ridiculous the stock market is and not just morally but responsibility wise,
if they cannot afford a 1% tax then there is a major problem there, simply put
the system is all wrong, it needs to be fixed and part of that must be taking
responsibility for their own greed outweighing their common sense, the
housing bubble itself is a perfect example of what happens when regulations
are eased, and in all honesty buying on margin is the epitome of whats wrong
with our economy, folks want to spend money they don't have to make more
for themselves and pass off the loss to anyone else they can leave holding the
bill.

It is a fundamental flaw with trust there, when it all goes poorly they wont
take responsibility for their failures, blarg sorry this is just such a horrid
situation it drives me mad sometimes, they would rather the rules simply
change to forgive, pay off, or pass on the debts they incurred at a 4 to 1
ratio.

1913, a corrupt Congress and a corrupt President changed the structure of the nation's economy and stole your freedom to say "no"!
The economic system was reverted to a mirror of that same system the nation fought a revolution to be free of.
The power to issue money was taken away from the government and given to the bankers and from that day onward, ALL money in circulation was created as the result of a loan at interest from the bankers to the government, to business, and to the people.
There is no exception. Every dollar paid in salary, spent to purchase food or gas, or paid in taxes, began as an interest bearing loan.
There is no money in circulation in the United States that did not start out as a loan at interest from the bankers at the privately-owned Federal Reserve system.
From that moment on, the freedom of the people to refuse to borrow from the banks and to refuse to pay interest was stripped away.
To participate in the commerce of the United States at all means being forced to use money loaned at interest, to the profit of the bankers and the impoverishment of the public.
Your freedom to say "no" was stolen by Congress in 1913, without your permission and before you were born.
When you have lost the freedom to say "no", when you have no choice but to pay a percentage of your earnings as interest to the bankers whether in private debt or taxes to cover the gargantuan debts by the US Government itself,
You are a slave to the bankers.
The system is intentionally designed to trap the nation's population permantly in unpayable debt, to make them slaves to that debt and to the bankers.
This is the purpose behind the design of the Federal Reserve,

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.
A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit.
We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
Woodrow Wilson 1919

reply to post by Kali74


Your numbers are all wrong. First off, our GDP is no where close to 1600 trillion dollars (1% tax results in 16 trillion dollars in one year?????)

I am just going to stop there. I dont know where you got your numbers from but the whole concept of taxing anything/anyone 1% would balance the budget is so bogus and so far off reality as to not even be real.

If the govt robbed ALL of the income of ALL the millionaires in the US it would not even come close to balancing the budget.

From another perspective:

I am sick and tired of the answer to our woes being higher taxes...tax the rich (which always winds up raising my taxes and I am not even close to rich) etc etc etc .... Clinton promised to only increase taxes on the rich, and I got hit with a significant tax increase...my income at the time? : 42k a year.
Now...Obummer said he was going to tax only those making over 100k or was it 200k? I forget...but somehow my income tax went up as did everyone who works!!! WTF !!

GD govt spending our money like it was...oh, not theirs....and wasting it...and always wanting more.

I am sorry, but the effing govt has NEVER been able to fix jack. War on poverty? Increased poverty. War on drugs? We are awash in drugs... Civil rights etc?? Race relations are being used as tools....there cannot be an honest discussion about race relations without someone being called a racist...hows that for openness?

The govt is good at doing about 3 things: Waste money, blow stuff up, red tape....have I forgotten anything?

There is not one aspect, not one expenditure, of your life that the govt doesnt take a chunk out of.

They cannot manage their own freaking budget, so the answer is to rob us of more money so they can spend that....

I am sick and fracking tired of it!!!

Taxing corporations would cause corporations to lower your wages. So in anyway, you lose.


People fail to see that the current money system is a failure, not who is being taxed and how much.

See Venus Project for alternative system.