Making Wall Street pay | Dean Baker
Wall Street’s irresponsible bankers caused this economic crisis. It’s only fair that they pay to clean up their mess
The deficit hawk crew, famous for missing the $8tn housing bubble that wrecked the economy, is now on the warpath, pressing the case for a big, new, national sales tax. They claim that the United States badly needs additional revenue to address projected budget shortfalls.
While we may need additional revenue at some point, it makes far more sense to impose a financial transactions tax, which would primarily hit the Wall Street banks that gave us this disaster, than to tax the consumption of ordinary working families. We can raise large amounts of money by taxing the speculation of the Wall Street high-flyers while barely affecting the sort of financial dealings that most of us do in our daily lives.
The logic of a financial transactions tax is simple. It would impose a modest fee on trades of stocks, futures, credit default swaps and other financial instruments. For example, the UK puts a 0.25% tax on the sale or purchase of shares of stock. This has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time.
For example, if someone buys $10,000 of stock, they will pay $25 in tax at the time of purchase. If they sell the stock 10 years later for $20,000, they will have to pay $50 in tax. The total tax would be equivalent to an increase of 0.8 percentage points in the capital gains tax.
By contrast, if someone is interested in buying stock at 1.00pm to sell at 2.00pm, this tax is likely to take a bit hit out of their expected profits. The same applies people who are speculating in futures, credit default swaps and other financial instruments.
We can raise more than $140bn a year taxing financial transactions, an amount equal to 1% of GDP. Before we look to impose a national sales tax, or value-added tax, as the deficit hawk crew would like, we should insist that we first put in place a set of financial transactions taxes.
A national sales tax will primarily hit the consumption of ordinary workers. People will pay for it in all of their everyday purchases. Food, clothing, medicine – everything will cost a bit more as a result of a sales tax. Poor and middle-class people will end up paying a larger share of their income in this tax. This is both because they spend a larger share of their income than the wealthy and also because they spend a larger share in the United States. While the wealthy may have the opportunity to travel extensively in Europe or in countries not affected by the national sales tax, few low- or middle-income people will have this option.
Since the financial sector is the source of the country’s current economic and budget problems it also makes sense to have this sector bear the brunt of any new taxes that may be needed. The economic collapse caused by Wall Street’s irrational exuberance has led to a huge increase in the country debt burden. It seems only fair that Wall Street bear the brunt of the clean-up costs. A financial transactions tax is the way to make sure that this happens.
In short, we have to tell the deficit hawk crew, many of whom earned their fortune on Wall Street, to slow down. The country does face serious budget problems, even if they may not be as bad as this crew claims. However, if we need taxes to address a budget shortfall, then Wall Street is the place to start. After we have put in place a tax on Wall Street speculation, if we still need additional money, we can talk about a tax that will primarily affect the middle class.
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