i’m not a macroeconomist so understanding may be wrong. i believe it’s intended to decrease volatility, and reduce emphasis on stock trading ( as opposed to actual investment ) as a way to gain wealth
people are generating money right now on computer predicted analysis and differential speed in the transmission of information ( literally how close can they put their computers to wall street. ) that separates the generation of wealth from labor and is a truly new phenomenon of the last 20-30 years
this is only one aspect of taxation. the one i ( and i think @Brainspore ) was talking about was disrupting intergenerational wealth.
even with a “fair share” you can still wind up with extremely separated social classes ( like we have now ), and that’s not good for society
( a third reason is to get the money moving again. right now wealth flows up and gets parked in things like property. if you tax it, you pull it out of parking and get it back into the economy via services like public healthcare, public education, public transit, etc )
Crap like that is why I want to see things regulated to human level speed. Transactions happen on the second (minute?) and are processed in a random order.
That was one of my favorite proposals from the Obama administration: tax trade transactions at a set fee. For the “little guy” investor it won’t even register, but for big investors trying to conduct a billion transactions a second, that’s gonna have an impact, and may help stabilize the market by making fluctuations slower, smaller, and more easily managed.
Yeah, high frequency trading (which is automated front-running, IMHO) does NOTHING to aid price-discovery and aid actual investment in the economy. Instead it ends up being a tax BY Wall Street investment banks. It wouldn’t take much of a fee to make high frequency trading uneconomic. And I’d prefer to see that money go to the government so that at least some of it might be used for public good.
That, and the notion of the Divine Right of Kings.
Now, we have a Neo-Aristocracy running things, and an ex-POTUS whose worshippers claim was sent by their god to rule America.
Well, ya gotta start somewhere, so might as well start at the top:
The controllers of that wealth damn sure won’t agree to any such regulations.
They have spent lots of time and money corrupting the system in their favor. This doesn’t help, either:
We’ve been involved in a class war for generations; guess which side is winning… because they know they are fighting this war, while the other side is contantly battling all manner of distractions that are being thrown their way: culture wars, economic anxiety, etc, etc.
In the US, the estate tax doesn’t kick in until after about $4M in inheritance, IIRC. So it it already a progressive tax. The hard part as you’ve noted, is actually getting them to pay it. It isually only applied is practicality when a relatively young, healthy rich person kicks it all of a sudden. If they have time to plan for it, it’s amazing how the inheritance from a billionaire is just a few dollars shy of the estate tax threshold.
