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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—— 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 —————-
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.