Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
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?