It’s time to tax the Wall Street casino!
from Lars Syll
Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
The measure of success attained by Wall Street, regarded as an institution of which the proper social purpose is to direct new investment into the most profitable channels in terms of future yield, cannot be claimed as one of the outstanding triumphs of laissez-faire capitalism — which is not surprising, if I am right in thinking that the best brains of Wall Street have been in fact directed towards a different object.
These tendencies are a scarcely avoidable outcome of our having successfully organised “liquid” investment markets. It is usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges … The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available, with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation over enterprise in the United States.
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—– look inside —– $5.94 / $20.00
—– look inside —– $4.90 / $8.00
—– look inside —– $15.99
—– look inside —– $5.99 / 12.99
—– look inside —– $5.93 / $12.99
—– look inside —– $4.97 / $9.90
—— Ugarteche, Puyana and Madi ——
Gerson Lima / Maria Alejandra Madi
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
————— Michael Hudson ————–
Maria Alejandra Madi / Jack Reardon
————- Edward Fullbrook ————-
—————— Steve Keen —————–
————— Richard Smith —————
————– Gustavo Marques————
– Victor Beker and Beniamino Moro –
————– Lars Pålsson Syll ————-
—————– Stuart Birks —————-
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
———— Armando Ochangco ———-
Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan
————— Mauro Gallegati ————–
————— Herman Daly —————-
————— Asad Zaman —————
—————– C. T. Kurien —————
————— Robert Locke —————-
Real-World Economics Review Blog 
We can tax the casino or we can shut it down. Those are the extremes. We can also regulate the casino. History shows that neither open slate nor prohibition work well. We must use a combination of regulations and taxes. These are measures which may be incrementally applied. Let the real system tell us what level of taxes and regulations need to be applied. Clearly, under neoliberalism, taxes and regulations have been far too light. They must be increased.
My bias would be to raise regulation and taxes to the point where capitalism is regulated and taxed out of existence, thus moving to a condition of cooperatives and market socialism and then beyond to systems which we cannot even envision yet. However, I am willing to be guided by empirical outcomes. If we reached a point where regulations and taxes were killing the only goose we could get to lay eggs then we can back off and find the near-optimum setting between statism and capitalism.
There is nothing new or profound about this. It’s simply saying that we should run a mixed economy and see what settings produce the greatest good for the greatest number; where equality of rights and opportunity are substantially realized and not just empty ideals.
We can prove Trump completly wrong I’m sure.
Should replace it with a genuine investment vehicle, which might be done by simply imposing minimum holding times for shares. Investors should commit to staying with companies long enough to give them a chance for the products they make getting to market and improving the well-being of society.
Perhaps, with the CoViD-19 lockdowns, this is already beginning to happen, as people support their favoured ‘content creators’ directly with subscriptions. So far, I’ve not heard of any market for the subscriptions once bought… To my mind, the massed movement of formerly ‘mainstream’ media entertainers on line to ‘platforms’ like YouTube, where there is unlimited scheduling capacity, and no editorial gatekeepers to decide what goes before the public, is a wonderfully liberating phenomenon to have emerged as a positive side-effect of a terrible pandemic. I look forward to seeing the end of conventional TV ‘stations’, ‘news’papers, and editorial boards, and all the powerful moneyed interests that bankrolled their centuries old stranglehold on the supply of information and enlightenment.
Transaction Tax is equivalent to the Stamp Act imposed by England to help pay the 140 million Pound Sterlings of debt for the war between England and France started by George Washington for the Richman. And, stupid Americans have let their public servants run up trillions in debts for wars to benefit the Richman. Not much has changed in that regard.