Ralph Nader: tax the speculators

[mrstocker]

Let's start with a fairness point. Why should you pay a 5 to 6 percent sales tax for buying the necessities of life, when tomorrow, some speculator on Wall Street can buy $100 million worth of Exxon derivatives and not pay one penny in sales tax?

Let's further add a point of common sense. The basic premise of taxation should be to first tax what society likes the least or dislikes the most, before it taxes honest labor or human needs.

In that way, revenues can be raised at the same time as the taxes discourage those activities which are least valued, such as the most speculative stock market trades, pollution (a carbon tax), gambling, and the addictive industries that sicken or destroy health and amass large costs.

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02052009.html

 

[BlueStreek]

There are so many "value assumptions" inherent in that Nader quote that he doesn`t even realize are value assumptions.....he thinks they are facts of nature. Total Moron who went to a nice school, blue-blood----but thinks like the herd--and is becoming more incoherent and irrelevant every year.


Besides that he is comparing apples and oranges: speculators are encouraged to take the big business risks which move the capitalist economy precisely b/c these risks are so high it necessitates high rewards.

Who does he think pays the taxes---the sucesssful speculators. They get taxed after the fact, as oppossed to before the fact.


Speculators who speculate poorly are taxed, they go broke---that is the ultimate tax.

Thirdly, society only taxes cigarettes, liquor, porn b/c they are easy targets given the moral makeup of influential constituent groups----the govt. MO is to tax anybody as much as they can get away with----these groups don`t have a powerful voice who will stand up to the government.