You Break It, You Buy It.
For the last two weeks, everyone in the mainstream corporate media has been bleating about the dire straits our economy is presently in as if it's a big surprise that it's come down to this. For some people who actually follow such things, this present crisis is simply the culmination of several things that has happened over the last thirty to forty years of plutocratic policies wearing a fiscally conservative mask. Our government, egged on by lobbyists who abuse the power afforded them by the First Amendment, allowed the deregulation of the rules that oversee the activities of corporations (trading, speculation, et cetera). They removed our currency from the gold standard, weakening the dollar against other currencies.
One of the first things they did, possibly under the notion that it was no longer needed, was remove the 0.25% tax on all stocks and commodities bought and sold in our markets in the 1960s. For example, if I purchased $10,000 in Apple Computer stock, I would pay $25 in taxes to the federal government. This tax targeted those who benefited the most from the commons, the national infrastructure that everyone uses: publicly funded roads, utilities, and so forth. It's also the sort of tax that progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt had in mind when they adopted the Sixteenth Amendment nearly 100 years ago. The elimination of this quarter of one percent tax forty years ago allowed people who played the stock market as their main source of income to essentially use the markets as a casino except the house never took their cut off the top (an analogy I credit to Thom Hartmann of Air America Radio).
With this tax no longer viable, coupled with deregulation of securities, banking, and the rest of Wall Street economic engines, the people who benefited the most from the new rules have run our economy to the brink of collapsing under its weight. Predictably, these giants have come running to the government to help. As of this writing, the government seems ready to oblige to the tune of $700 billion given in increments. There is a way for those who propagated this pile of broken china to pay to repair the damage. If in the near future (or more hopefully in this bailout package) Congress reenacts the tax on all trades, it could pay off this $700 billion "bailout" in four to five years. Several economists assert that given the amount of trades done in the stock markets all over the country it could generate $125 to $200 billion dollars a year. The best part is, this money would come from people who can afford to pay for it and not from everyday people who still struggle to put $4.00 per gallon gas in their cars.
One of the first things they did, possibly under the notion that it was no longer needed, was remove the 0.25% tax on all stocks and commodities bought and sold in our markets in the 1960s. For example, if I purchased $10,000 in Apple Computer stock, I would pay $25 in taxes to the federal government. This tax targeted those who benefited the most from the commons, the national infrastructure that everyone uses: publicly funded roads, utilities, and so forth. It's also the sort of tax that progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt had in mind when they adopted the Sixteenth Amendment nearly 100 years ago. The elimination of this quarter of one percent tax forty years ago allowed people who played the stock market as their main source of income to essentially use the markets as a casino except the house never took their cut off the top (an analogy I credit to Thom Hartmann of Air America Radio).
With this tax no longer viable, coupled with deregulation of securities, banking, and the rest of Wall Street economic engines, the people who benefited the most from the new rules have run our economy to the brink of collapsing under its weight. Predictably, these giants have come running to the government to help. As of this writing, the government seems ready to oblige to the tune of $700 billion given in increments. There is a way for those who propagated this pile of broken china to pay to repair the damage. If in the near future (or more hopefully in this bailout package) Congress reenacts the tax on all trades, it could pay off this $700 billion "bailout" in four to five years. Several economists assert that given the amount of trades done in the stock markets all over the country it could generate $125 to $200 billion dollars a year. The best part is, this money would come from people who can afford to pay for it and not from everyday people who still struggle to put $4.00 per gallon gas in their cars.
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