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 Honorable James DeMint (R-SC)
United States House of RepresentativesTHURSDAY, 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.
This is nonsense. A financial transaction tax would apply to all people who engage in the specified transactions. There's no picking or choosing. Do you favor taxing people who buy new homes? Do you deny that these new home buyers are "a small minority of persons to the exclusion of all others?" How do you conclude that the tax on new home purchases is perfectly fine while the financial transactions tax is a "pure exercise in social populist tyranny".