Wall Street / GameStop Mania

[Montmorency]

Percentages can be tweaked, Sanders' proposal has 5 thousandths of a percent on derivatives. Also, the range you quoted was $60 to $220 billion annually, Biden's universal pre-k is $775 billion over ten years. So this FTT could fund it even on the lower end.

If you taxed stocks at like 10% per transaction, you might encounter real Laffer Curve issues as it would drastically limit the liquidity of the markets and incentives to trade stock. I'm surprised you didn't note this even as you were criticizing wealth taxes as prone to economic shock.

The reality is we need multiple interlocking tax and regulatory schemes, in transnational alignment, to even begin to reduce wealth inequality through government transfers, which is absolutely a core objective of a tax regime (and was recognized as such during the New Deal).

If you want trillions of dollars, just do what everyone else does and create a VAT.

See my last sentence.

More complicated than this, I don't think people generally cared for the volatility that WSB created although there was good money to be made from it. Markets have (for good reason) automatic trading halts and 'circuit breakers' to combat rapid rises and falls in securities and indexes.

This might be responding to something else. What I meant was merely that more small actors participating in financial markets actually suits the big actors who can manipulate them (e.g. the old, now-illegal (?) schemes in which brokers and advisors in the 80s or 90s would call up small account-holders with advice on what to buy and sell, and meanwhile institutional actors who knew the same brokers would be offloading risk by pricing in that the small actors were soaking up excess stock or whatever).

US companies would not be competitive if they had to carry pensions, GE has been struggling for a while to maintain theirs.

Who said the companies have to carry pensions - or healthcare access?

[a completely inoffensive name]

If you taxed stocks at like 10% per transaction, you might encounter real Laffer Curve issues as it would drastically limit the liquidity of the markets and incentives to trade stock. I'm surprised you didn't note this even as you were criticizing wealth taxes as prone to economic shock.

I didn't note it because there is several orders of magnitude difference between 10% and 0.005%. When I said it could be tweaked, I meant 'how about 0.008% or 0.01%'. Having an FTT at the right amount could also benefit markets through mechanisms noted in your original source.

The reality is we need multiple interlocking tax and regulatory schemes, in transnational alignment, to even begin to reduce wealth inequality through government transfers, which is absolutely a core objective of a tax regime (and was recognized as such during the New Deal).

This is true but does not entail applying every tax we can conjure up to achieve high revenues. Still need to asses each one rigorously and see where it fits as whole into the framework.

This might be responding to something else. What I meant was merely that more small actors participating in financial markets actually suits the big actors who can manipulate them (e.g. the old, now-illegal (?) schemes in which brokers and advisors in the 80s or 90s would call up small account-holders with advice on what to buy and sell, and meanwhile institutional actors who knew the same brokers would be offloading risk by pricing in that the small actors were soaking up excess stock or whatever).

Ahh gotcha. Well time will tell on how Congress and the SEC view DeepFuckingValue and whether he engaged in market manipulation by using social media to purposely drive up a stock that would suit his portfolio. Will have implications on the interaction of social media and market actors.

Who said the companies have to carry pensions - or healthcare access?

Any specific alternatives you are thinking of? Universal retirement accounts provided by the government w/ matching contributions?

[Montmorency]

I didn't note it because there is several orders of magnitude difference between 10% and 0.005%. When I said it could be tweaked, I meant 'how about 0.008% or 0.01%'. Having an FTT at the right amount could also benefit markets through mechanisms noted in your original source.

This is true but does not entail applying every tax we can conjure up to achieve high revenues. Still need to asses each one rigorously and see where it fits as whole into the framework.

I referred to stocks because Sanders' plan would have taxed them (their transfer) at 0.5%. His 0.005% rate was for derivatives. I doubt that a 3% wealth tax - which could never induce enough avoidance not to be worth the while - could possibly be as disruptive and limiting as a financial transaction tax that bumps the rates up even into the single integers.

Taxing the movement of financial instruments (prospective gain) is IME inherently less efficient and effective, and more disruptive, than taxing earned income (realized gain, liquid) or taxing wealth (realized gain, less liquid, usually financial instruments or real property). That doesn't mean you can't do it - we already do - but the marginal and revenue limits are tighter than for other kinds of taxes.

Any specific alternatives you are thinking of? Universal retirement accounts provided by the government w/ matching contributions?

It's tough, because government pensions as well as private pension funds predominantly invest for capital returns to, in principle, multiply and shore up their assets, minimally in index funds. In the short term, any sort of reform has the potential to hurt retirees or near-retirees.

For example, the Netherlands relies on private non-profit pension funds independent of employers, but as money-managing funds they do naturally reinvest the contributions.

Besides a pure payroll-tax and defined/matching-contribution system, it's hard for me to imagine how to avoid getting the performance of financial markets implicated in retirement. Even socialist proposals for sovereign wealth funds (to distribute dividends of creeping collective ownership) assume the existence and performance of financial markets; not only assume, but potentiate, align their incentives with.

Would need a more expert perspective here than I can offer. Meanwhile, I can identify some desirable attributes of pension or retirement systems for consideration:

1. Less emphasis on prefunding mechanisms
2. Function as a de facto basic income (comprehensive rather than supplementary)
3. Not dependent on, or constructive of, greater shareholder and owner influence over economy, government, and society



Then again,



we do got that Big Money. (From MattYg)

[Xantan]

As expected by many, and definitely wanted by some, the GME stock cratered in the weeks after the mania, trading now at about 63 dollars.

However, the SEC is expected to research the topic quite heavily and apparently the person who started this is under investigation by the SEC as well.

[Noble Wrath]

Sorry for reviving this thread. How's the situation now?

[Olaf The Great]

This might happen again. And those who manipulate the market should get punished, imo.
Too bad there aren't whistleblowers in this field. There should be. They'd get good rewards, as stated by Oberheiden P.C., a law firm.