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The Speculator Tax
As protesters have refused to yield in their “occupations” of public places, they have gained momentum and support throughout the country. Yet for Congress it has been business as usual. Elected representatives there have virtually ignored the outrage expressed by protesters on Wall Street and across the country. But the message will keep coming until Congress finally demonstrates that it is listening. A good start would be a tax on financial speculation.
Just two years after the height of the financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal reported that the top 25 firms on Wall Street paid out a total of $135 billion in compensation in 2010, providing an average compensation of $141,000 per employee. Meanwhile, 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Wages have remained stagnant, and median household income is down 7% from 2000, while the largest corporations and executives have seen record profits and bonuses year after year.
The protesters know these economic realities all too well. Not so those in corporate boardrooms and in Congress, who are insulated by the bubbles in which they live.
The politicians—Republicans and Democrats alike—who continue to ignore the will of the people may face a rocky campaign season. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that 82% of respondents were familiar with the Occupy Wall Street movement and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that Americans supported the protests by a 2-to-1 ratio (37% for and 18% against). Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center poll in early October found that nearly half of Americans couldn’t name even a single Republican presidential candidate. These numbers should be giving corporate plutocrats a scare.
The prospect of a financial-speculation sales tax already is worrying them. In late September, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Financial Services Forum and Business Roundtable, organizations that represent the interests of the most powerful corporations and financial-services companies in the world, wrote Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to express their opposition to such a tax. They spoke for the 1% they represent, not the 99% whom Occupy Wall Street aims to elevate and who have to pay a 5%-8% sales tax on the necessities of life.
Occupiers throughout the country are pushing elected officials to break the corporate stranglehold on our economy. Both Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) have proposed legislation in the past that would enact a 0.25% tax on the value of stock, bond and derivatives transactions.
But that is far too small. National Nurses United and other progressive groups believe that we would be better served by a rate of 0.5%. This could help curb the wheeling and dealing on Wall Street and raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to help with our country’s economic recovery. According to estimates...
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