The Tobin tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax was originally suggested as a way to slow down the volume of financial transactions of many types. Tobin said something like he wanted to "throw sand into the mechanism..." The Tobin tax was designed to slow down, only as a byproduct would it collect revenues. The Bit Tax http://library2.usask.ca/gic/v2n4/cordell/cordell.html was designed to collect revenues.
arthur -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2012 2:56 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Arthur's 1st belief Arthur wrote: > May be time to consider new pricing and taxing ideas for the digital > economy. Somewhere (Globe & Mail? Risks Digest? I forget) I saw a call for taxing financial transactions in response to the automated-trading train wreck at Knight. The idea was to deter myriad speed-of-light trades for a few cents or mils profit each. Dunno if it was just some journalist's two bits' worth or if it's a notion that has legs. By me, the whole stock market is subversive of capitalism. Put money into a business or project: you're committed to the success of that project for the long run. Put money into a project, then try to trade the stock: you've created an incentive for the project to built a Potemkin village. But I guess we're a century or three beyond good sense capitalism. Hmmm... How about a tax on stock trades that's confiscatory during the first 24 hours of ownership; punitive during the first year; then declineing gradually to zero over 3 (or 5 or 10) years? If neccessary, a flat-out, draconian ban on any derivatives that attempt to end-run the tax mechanism. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
