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

That this tax is even being considered is a sad example of democracy. It's an insanely destructive and just downright irrational tax. Anyone that's not insanely ignorant about finance or is intelligent and just gives it a few seconds of thought would know this.

It makes me angry even thinking about how idiotic it is and how people are supporting it??

However, in a democracy, people vote ignorantly and with their feelings all the time. Hence, the debts, wars, social programs, etc. that we all have.

Originally posted by Razimus
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.

Actually, your 401K and retirement accounts are invested in American securities. This tax would erode their value over decades. Big banks don't even trade stocks! They sell them and make commissions. The trading they do do is market making and would have to be exempt from the law.

You have absolutely know idea what you're talking about. Since you have no idea, why do you have an opinion? Why don't you bother to educate yourself before having one?

Don't you realize that in a democracy, your opinion effects other people? Your ignorance would destroy entire industries, families, and livelihoods. And I bet you don't even care.

That goes for essentially anyone in this thread even vaguely contemplating supporting this tax. There is absolutely no excuse for even having an opinion on something with the ridiculous ignorance about the subject you'd need to even contemplate this tax.

This is the kind of crap that is destroying democracies all over the globe.

They really don't want you be out of debt as that would weaken there fiscal control over you and they are not at heart in the public or national interest, indeed there seems to be a behind the scene's clique that has engineered this whole debacle and whom are in the process of bringing the formerly strong to there knee's in order to consolidate there own power base, the banking giant Goldman Sachs is one of there front man organisation's but they have traditionally never put all there egg's on one basket so to speak,.

It is part of a international policy that has been engineered to bring us all down, though it may seem unrelated I believe that this is all part of a plan led by some real villain's whom may be too powerfull to easily bring down though one is an English Duke whom would like nothing less than to put the English and American Serf's back under his heel like he really believes his murdering stealing ancestor's were better than the mugger that robs a granny on the street.

In England we have a similar situation and the illusion of political choice is just that as they took control of the main opposition party the labour party in the 1980's-1990's after Margaret thatcher abused human right's during a legal miner's strike by using physical violence and intimidation against miner's and the MI5 to spy agency bug and monitor the TUC (Trade union's conference - a democratically elected (but still corrupt) federation made up of the trade union's of the united kingdom), she then weakened the union's by limiting the power's of the union's so that in effect they have to ask permission to go on strike this left a lot of former union member's disillusioned and they left there now powerless union's leaving a deficit in the payment that the TUC could make to the Labour party, this funding gap was filled by those whom also funded the Tory party and so both party's became there proxy meaning from that point on (TONY BLAIR) that the British public no longer had a democratic representation in the house of common's, Blair then brought in Devolution (We though relatively populace are smaller than most American state's) a process of decentralisation of government that has created a culture of corruption in our local authority's under the guise it would make the country more accountable to the people (divide and conquer anyone), also mass immigration was promoted as the immigrant's work for minium wage therefore driving wage's down (but hey they don't pay tax and send 60 to 80 percent of there earning's back out of the British economy), now we have a proxy tax disguised as a cost cutting exercise that is designed to drive poor English into smaller accommodation called the bedroom tax and it's real purpose is to create more accommodation for yet another wave of foreign immigration into the UK,.

We have a tax in the UK called council tax that if the British government took the LOGICAL step of reversing devolution and auditing the local authority's account's (there would be a need for more prison space for the corruption) would actually give the UK government a surplus of tax just like your wall street tax would but these people are not representative of our interest's only there own.

We may be fighting a losing war my friend but all oppression eventually end's in revolt and let us therefore hope it is those whom wish to restore democracy that win and not a swing too far.

It wouldn't be up to them and what they want if people wake up. And really start to meditate and touch base with their infinite souls and HS. They could just sit down and meditate that all the nonsense cease, the drones hit the ground and that the meetings the citizens groups have with t;heir inept and mutinous employees go very well, and people start to become fully capable, loving and sharing, yet sovereign and free, for mom and dad's energies, both things are needed.

Thats what it takes, they think they're gods, but the lower frequency ones are no match for the love and integrity and mind abilities of the Good Awake souls.

Yes, a 1-5% tax on wallstreet and all tradings, would eliminate the need for taxes and sales tax and yet provide wonderful programs for people and many clean ethical business start ups.

See this, yearn for it, pray for it, envision it, work for it, form citizens groups as the first strongest level of government and start to grow up.


Be Water My Friend! - Bruce Lee Remix | #eTHErSEC

The way you gain ability over them, the first step is to NOT REACT, with fight or flight or fear, to any of their arranged events, nationally, or abroad. Override all reaction and think things through, and then place the blame at their feet calmly and with great dignity and clarity.

Originally posted by RedDragon
That this tax is even being considered is a sad example of democracy. It's an insanely destructive and just downright irrational tax. Anyone that's not insanely ignorant about finance or is intelligent and just gives it a few seconds of thought would know this

Alright Dragon, given your assertion --- though not explained in detail --- can you tell me why a sales tax makes sense (a national sales tax has even been discussed) but a tax on financial transactions does not? The retail business community is in such sorry state that many states have 'sales tax holidays' once a year to spur business. That being the case, it's clear that the sales tax suppresses retail sales (or a 'holiday' would be senseless, no?). And who gets hit disproportionately hard by sales tax? Lower income people.

The vast majority of market transactions are institutional. Small investors have been steadily dropping out of the market and account for a small percentage of market volume. Roughly a third of people with 401k's (less than half of Americans) are raiding their accounts to stay afloat. Meanwhile, the Big Guys are hauling in obscene profits. And a 1% tax would stifle the economy how?

reply to post by StarBoy


With the 2nd highest tax rate on corporations is there any doubt why large corporations have moved their operations oversees?

As early as the 90s there were no tv's made in the US any more and manufacturing jobs were fleeing the country by the millions... why is that? Could it be that the US viewed corporations as "evil" because they are profit driven? Could it be because the operating expenses were so prohibitive that they could not survive if they continued to manufacture inside the US? Could it be that because of the prohibitive expenses of operating in the US made oversees competition impossible?

On one hand people call corporations evil, and want them heavily taxed and then those same people curse those same corporations when they move jobs oversees. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

The basic problem is we have a fat, bloated, wasteful govt that thinks our money is theirs for the taking and is the worst kind of parasite that can exist....the kind that kills it's host.

a billion here a billion there - purdy soon yer talk'n real money.

this sounds great - get back to taxing capital gains only.
by only - I mean get out of my pocket - extracting from my paycheck is not a tax so much as an extortion.

Once again...the numbers are bogus.

All you have to do is look at our GDP.....there is no way in hell that a 1% tax on anything is going to balance the budget.

Do the freaking math.

Originally posted by Junkheap
...
Gotta keep that greed going, right?

More, more, more, more!

edit on 22-3-2013 by Junkheap because: (no reason given)

You are probably as greedy, or even more than they are because you want their money as well...

Are you one of those who were demanding for "your bailout" instead of demandindg the bailouts to end?...

People not supporting a tax like this were obviously not invested in the market during the .com crash or every other Wall Street fiasco that has happened since then. The Big Guys basically raped us in every one of these scenarios and the common, small investor lost most of their hard earned equity every time.

I say yes, radical? yes, but it would certainly level the playing field because it would be the only solution that can put money back into the economy that their obscene profits take out, and funnel out of this country as well.

Make it so.

Originally posted by jibajaba
a billion here a billion there - purdy soon yer talk'n real money.

this sounds great - get back to taxing capital gains only.
by only - I mean get out of my pocket - extracting from my paycheck is not a tax so much as an extortion.

I agree with your sentiment, but the same sentiment also applies to capital gains...by what virtue is the govt "entitled" to our hard earned money? By what virtue is the govt "entitled" to monies earned by that hard earned money?

If you (in general) are one of those who believe we should tax the hell out of the rich, ask yourself this:

Who provides jobs? Who are the entrepreneurs? Is a penalty for success going to create the culture of growth and prosperity we need?

reply to post by bbracken677


Nope. Not taxes, labor costs. They fled to countries with cheaper labor (no unions, cheap hourly wage, no benefits, lax environmental laws) when they were able to re-tool laws to allow it and now that the differential in labor/shipping costs has shrunk guess what? Companies are coming back. Tax structure hasn't changed but they want to come back because they aren't seeing the bottom-line benefit of cheap labor.

reply to post by bbracken677


Well bracken, what right does the gov't have to monies I earn through actual labor? Let's say I make birdhouses for a living. I have to charge my customers sales tax on each bird house. I have to pay sales tax on materials I buy. Those costs get passed on to my customers. What's the difference?

audit then abolish the "federal" reserve/for-profit banking system.

Taxing every transaction on wall street would be like taxing you every time you take a breath.

reply to post by LibertysTeeth


What? That's just plain stupid. What about the majority of Americans that have no Wall Street transactions? If Wall Street is such a sacred cow (clearly untouchable no matter how badly they anally ream the country) why are THEY doing so well yet the People are doing so poorly? Why are they too-big-to fail, too-big-to-prosecute yet the economy limps along?

I'm generally anti-tax unless there are also spending cuts going with it, but I could live with this for one reason. HFT (High Frequency Trading) has allowed institutions that practice it to steal a penny millions of times a day from other market participants. I'd personally like to see a method that exposed HFT traders to execution risk instead of allowing them to put in hundreds or thousands of bids and move the price in the way they wish and then cancel the bids. Making all bids valid for 2 or 3 seconds (possibly even shorter) would help reduce the impact of HFT on the markets.

I don't necessarily support a 1% tax on all market transactions, but I could definitely get behind a $.01 per share/issue tax on executed trades. There is usually a $.02 + difference between the bid and the ask in a trade. This spread is how the market makers earn their money. I don't think a $.01 tax per share/issue traded would have that great of an impact on our markets.

Make no mistake though the only way to get the US out of its deficit and to work on the debt is massive spending cuts, massive tax increases, or some combination of the two regardless of what partisans of either party say.

reply to post by jtma508


I'll just make it simple. What are you typing on? What are financial transactions done on? How many countries have them?

reply to post by Kali74


I think that a 1% tax on trades would be brilliant. It would get us out of debt and it would cause some of the worst manipulators of the system to move on to overseas trading markets.

I attended a stock trading seminar a few years back (2006 - I had several grand to put in at the time) and the guy with the mic kept telling us "Forget about investing. You'll never make a dime investing. What I'm here to teach you is how to get rich by trading stocks. This isn't about investing in anything."

He then went about detailing how to set up buy-sell triggers on your day-trading online dashboard, and how crazy pitches in the Dow will make quick cash for you.

I think that "traders" need to start paying their way in this market. They contribute NOTHING AT ALL to the economy, and they are the reason the whole thing collapsed like it did. A 1% sales tax isn't asking too much from them - we can put it on all stock trades that involve holds of less than a week - and if it is too much for them, then let them run for Europe or Asia. Who cares. They're worthless piranha anyway. Screw 'em.

I don´t get it why so many are disappointed with this tax.

We pay tax for every transaction we make. For example, I pay 20% sales tax for every item I buy, whether it would potato, iphone or a car. For a 1 euro thing, I pay 1,2 euros.

Every official job has to pay taxes. Every company has to pay 30% of the salary to the country. Then why don´t people who are investing have to pay taxes? Trading stocks is a trade like anything else. Of course it should be taxed.