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That "½ of 1% tax" is compounded by the number of accounts & instuments the money must pass through to consumate the trade becoming a 365% tax on the basic value of the commerce being financed. That is not only socialist it is down right usurous and confiscative.

Our dialogue is getting stale again, as it did on a previous thread. Putting aside hyperbole, there is, say, $100T per year in stock and bond trades. A ½ of 1% tax on those transactions (assuming 20% lower volume and 20% avoidance) will raise, say, $200B per year. You’re okay with raising substantially more from taxing retail sales. You’re willing to collect $50 billion per year from the small class of new home purchasers. Yet you deem this financial transaction tax as socialistic, usurious, and confiscatory. You have given no basis for this opinion.

Yet you deem this financial transaction tax as socialistic, usurious, and confiscatory. You have given no basis for this opinion.

I certainly do have a strong basis for such an opinion, the Tobin tax is applied to a very small minority of persons to the exclusion of all others. As such it does not meet the very real criteria of equal protection under the law. It is merely an exercise of raw power at the expense of a small political minority to provide largess to a much larger voting majority.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw

The Tobin tax is a pure exercise in social populist tyranny at its worst and is a perpetuation of what is wrong with the current now you see it now you don't shell game tax system.

The Crisis of Democracy

The Honorable James DeMint (R-SC)
United States House of Representatives
THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2001
12:00 noon
"In 1996, Congress passed a historic welfare reform law that has dramatically reduced the number of Americans who depend on welfare. In spite of this positive development, Representative DeMint is concerned about the steady growth of a welfare/entitlement state that extends well beyond the poor and is forcing millions of middle income Americans into dependency.
There has been a shift in the relationship between individuals and government, he argues, such that fewer and fewer are paying taxes at the same time that more and more are receiving increasingly generous benefits. If it becomes the case that most voters do not bear a financial burden for this largess, then there will be little to restrain--and significant political incentives to encourage--the continued growth of government. And at that point, DeMint warns, we have reached a major crisis in our democracy.

Which is why the founders created a representative republic as opposed to the popular democracies that the socialist attempts to make of our nation.

You’re okay with raising substantially more from taxing retail sales.

More had nothing to do with it. Unequal and inequitable distribution of tax rates has everything to do with it.

Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention June 12, 1788:

"the oppression arising from taxation, is not from the amount but, from the mode -- a thorough acquaintance with the condition of the people, is necessary to a just distribution of taxes.

Thomas Hobbes from Leviathan

It is fairer to tax people on what they extract from the economy, as roughly measured by their consumption, than to tax them on what they produce for the economy, as roughly measured by their income.