and stuff people into boxes based on shallow demographic information and moronic stereotypes!!!

Talk about issues before a primary. That's insane!!

(And a sarcastic kick)

I guess it depends on how much the tax is. And how stable the revenue would be.

It could be amazing.

Trickle down works. Because they're corporatists. All of them

you support Trickle-Down.

They say they don't like Citizens United, but they are willing to look the other way if it benefits their candidate.

What some who would be affected by this have to say from my interactions with them is 'why should I have to sacrifice what I make to pay for someone else's college tuition' always adding that they are not rich and are engaged in speculation to try to up their own incomes.

getting an educated workforce. I heard about one corporation that was complaining about the fact they couldn't find educated people for their workforce. They want the benefit of educated workers but not willing to pay taxes for education.

Did you see what H. Clinton said about education? Something like, "no one should go into debt for a college education." This is Clinton rhetoric. Notice she is strong on the "shouldn't" but weak on how to correct the problem, eg. TAX GOLDMAN-SACHS.

Doesn't that crap just make your blood boil?!?

Such complete and total bullshit.

"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism." He neatly demolishes all of the neoliberal talking points with facts, figures, logic and wit. Great read, both highly informative and fun.

I will check it out. Sounds great

.

I would assume, never.

Not when they are up to their eyeballs in the dirty money from the Criminals Of Wall Street.

I don't think it would be stable enough (and perhaps insufficient) to achieve the stated goal.

But as a starting point, and a model for where the untapped financial resources are, its a useful starting point.

He can't levy taxes by Executive Order.

So how would your candidate be different?

He mentioned today in NH that his proposition would cost somewhere around $70 billion so I'd assume the tax would raise approximately that much.

to the UK tax in terms of exemptions, but the UK tax raises something like 0.2% of GDP per year, which in the US would come out to $30B or $35B. A little short of the $70B, but still not bad.

And the percentage of GDP might be higher in the US, since my guess is there's more trading here proportional to GDP than in the UK (just a guess, don't know for sure).

But I think I remember Bernie saying something about a 1 or 2% tax on trades, which would make sense based on what you posted.

the biggest institutional investors are pension funds, which would affect retirees (present and future).

countries where they are doing it, very successfully.

That amount is per year, btw.

Plan here:

https://14d2r744okfe40r1ug1oqm6y-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/OMalley-Debt-Free-College-Goal.pdf

"urge the states" to reverse what they have been doing in the last few decades.

To be fair, one person cannot do it all; it takes a movement -- as we Sanders folks have been saying. Is O'Malley building a movement at the level of the states that would put some leverage behind his "urging?" If so, let us know, so we can support that movement and, hopefully, advance together.

Office to encourage States to hold down costs along with proposals that can be done by Executive Order are an unlikely dream?



Great moments in cherry picking!

I agree that it's workable and far better than today. However, as Wall Street continues to steal us blind, I see a plan to attain a debt-free from all that money as the real solution.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to read this, and I'll go back to it, to be fair.

It can be found here:

https://14d2r744okfe40r1ug1oqm6y-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/OMalley-Wall-Street-Reform.pdf

will be the same thing.



First we need to invest $40 trillion or so to rebuild what has been sold, to re=engineer our decrepit an dclosed factories. Then we need to invest another however much to train and educate people.

This will give us people used to being kept in warehouses, thousands upon thousands who could have put those years to better use if there was an industry to work in.

Training people up with nothing for them except get a low-wage job and pay payments to bankers is a recipe for creating disaffected people.

badly needs it, and also would create long term jobs providing good salaries. Sort of like FDR's works program.

An FTT instead of income tax is OK, but earmarked for college tuition has problems. Making college affordable or free is a great idea. Paying for it with an FTT may not be so good.

Reason Number One:

First, most large state retirement funds that are going to public employees and union contracted workers would be taxed. Those funds are often traded everyday by brokers. In Florida, it's 200 BILLION traded by over 200 brokers. The same holds for most of the 50 states.

Every penny in those funds comes from and goes to public employees who sometimes fought hard and worked a lifetime for retirement. If the funds are taxed, it will simply mean the employees would have less benefits or pay more. Not the millionaires and billionaires; but the regular working people would pay for this tax. That makes the tax regressive - because everyday workers would be subsidizing people going to college - who are usually more elite and wealthy already!

Here's Bernie's proposal:

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/collegeforallsummary/

Fully Paid for by Imposing a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street. This legislation is offset by
imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of
0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005%
fee on derivatives. It has been estimated that this provision could raise hundreds of billions a year
which could be used not only to make tuition free at public colleges and universities in this country,
it could also be used to create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class of this country.

The first problem with Sanders’ proposal is that a national tuition subsidy will be counterproductive even on its own terms. The proposal will cut the economic legs out from underneath innovations such as open online courses, which may be on the cusp of delivering low-cost, high-quality college education for all. Organizations trying to deliver radical new models will now have to compete against a $70 billion subsidy for the old system.

Additionally, directing that much guaranteed money into a system is a sure-fire way to accelerate cost inflation. The state may pick up the tab for tuition, but students will still have to pay for ancillary services (such as room, board, textbooks, etc.), and those services will go up in price. These costs are not trivial; for instance, although Sweden has abolished college tuition, students graduate with more debt than students in the United Kingdom, and only slightly less than students in the US. Through economic incompetence, Sanders’ proposal might hit the jackpot of reducing college quality while also increasing cost.

The no-tuition part of the Sanders plan attracted a great deal of attention, aided by canny headline writers who understand that "Bernie Sanders" is catnip for social media. Less discussed was the corollary part of the plan: In exchange for billions of new taxpayer dollars, the federal government would enforce a specific vision of what a high-quality college education means.

States would have to promise that, within five years, "not less than 75 percent of instruction at public institutions of higher education in the State is provided by tenured or tenure-track faculty." In addition, any funds left over after eliminating tuition could be used only for purposes such as "expanding academic course offerings to students," "increasing the number and percentage of full-time instructional faculty," providing faculty members with "supports" such as "professional development opportunities, office space, and shared governance in the institution." States would be prohibited from using the money for merit-based financial aid, "nonacademic facilities, such as student centers or stadiums," or "the salaries or benefits of school administrators."

Global Super-Rich Stashing Up To $32 Trillion Offshore, Masking True Scale Of Inequality: Study
The global super-rich are stashing trillions of dollars offshore with the help of some of the world's biggest banks, putting billions of dollars out of the taxman’s reach and masking wealth inequality's true heights.
Wealthy people were hiding between $21 and $32 trillion in offshore jurisdictions around the world as of 2012, according to a 2012 study from the Tax Justice Network, an organization which aims to promote tax transparency. The study, highlighted by a recent Bloomberg News report, found that more than $12 trillion of that money was managed by 50 international banks, many of which received bailouts during the financial crisis, according to James Henry, the study’s author.
“There’s a lot more missing wealth in the world than we had known about from previous estimates,” Henry told The Huffington Post. “The real scandal is not all these individual scandals but the fact that world’s policy makers who know about this stuff, have basically done nothing.”

My #1 problem with Bernie's campaign. Every idea involves someone else paying for it.

it's also the retired cop and fireman and teacher and governmental unit retiree and anyone that has a 401K or pension.

more transactions a day on the same stock.

(i.e., pension funds) investment strategies and get back to me. K?

The tax will only hurt speculators not pension funds.

wall street banks and hedge funds. Both of these entities engage in HFTing. So, YES, pension funds would be taxed under this scheme.

And funny YOU of all people would whine about how someone speaks to another.

moved back and forth. Zero sum if taken over a long period which negates the pyramid building and tearing down. I wouldn't want my pension fund gambling by speculating on securities.

as, IMO, it is worse than gambling ... if done correctly, pure leeching off the market.

A financial transaction tax is very appealing to his supporters. It's the proverbial money tree: it can raise huge amounts of money and it can do so very painlessly (only harms the evil hedge funds and banks instead of normal people like you and me). Plays right to his image of striking against the fat cats at Wall Street and evil high frequency traders.

Only problem is how much money can it really raise? I would welcome anyone to challenge my analysis without resorting to name-calling.

According to his website, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/collegeforallsummary/?inline=file it could raise "hundreds of billions of dollars a year".

Let's analyze this thoughtfully.

(1) Firstly, let's agree on the principle that in order for people to be willing to pay the tax, they must be making much more than the amount of the tax in profits. Let's assume that people are willing to put up with a 60% effective tax on their profits. I'm not even considering the fact that profits are also taxed through corporate taxes or short-term capital gains taxes, in addition to state/local taxes.

(2) Secondly, let's try to look at some hard upper limits on the total earnings from the public financial sector. Bear in mind that a lot of these earnings have nothing to do with high frequency trading but other banking activity e.g. credit cards, asset management, interest from loans, investment banking, etc. Also bear in mind that increasingly a lot of prop trading has been driven out of banks by the Volker rule.

https://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/quarterly/
FDIC-insured institutions had net income of $40b in Q1. Let's assume $160b over a year. This includes small community banks and large money center banks.

http://graphics.wsj.com/quarterly-bank-earnings/
Looking at the top six banks, they earn about $25b in net income in a quarter or $100b a year.

http://equity-research.com/list-of-top-200-investment-banks-and-boutiques/
Looking at just the investment banks the US firms in the top 10 list earn about $60b in net income a year.

The entire S&P 500 earns about $1 trillion+ in earnings a year.

So perhaps a very generous upper bound on the total net income of the public financial industry is about $300b. As mentioned before, most of this would be non trading related activity (normal consumer, commercial and investment banking stuff). Most banks are getting rid of their prop desk.

If you recall JP Morgan's London Whale (which is the kind of prop trading we are talking about), they lost $7b for the bank, which was a big deal for them.


(3) Thirdly, on to the evil hedge funds. Again let's try to establish some upper bounds on their total profits (I'm using profits here to mean performance instead of actual incentive fees).

The hedge fund industry is about < $3 trillion. Average performance is about 10% a year. Let's say the total performance of the hedge fund industry is $300b a year. There are going to be some managers who are successful and those who fail. There are going to be some managers with very low returns and some people with very high returns. Also we are assuming all this is generated in US markets (as opposed to overseas markets).

Now this performance doesn't just go to the pockets of the hedge fund managers. At the end of the day, this performance belongs to the investors, who are going to be mainly pension plans, foundations, endowments, etc. Remember one goal is to hurting "normal" people. So we need to give them an exemption from this tax.

Also, a lot of this performance isn't generated by high frequency trading.


(4) So in conclusion,
1. The entire US banking sector earns on the order of $300b a year, the vast majority of which is normal banking stuff (consumer, commercial, and investment banking) instead of prop trading.

2. The entire hedge fund industry's performance is about $300b a year, which belongs to their clients. Most of this performance isn't generated by high frequency trading and we want to exempt the right kind of investors (pensions, foundations, endowments).

5. Finally, the last piece of the parcel is that we you raise tax on an activity, you generally reduce such activity.

So, how does Bernie raise "hundreds of billions" from his financial transactions tax?

simply moved from one place to another. I don't mind if the billionaires want to fight it out, but when pension funds are involved, the 99% will always end up on the losing end.

I am curious how you define "performance".

but you still didn't answer my question of how is this tax supposed to raise billions of dollars.

On your question on performance, let's give a very simple example.

Let's say pension plan decides to invest $100m with a hedge fund (and assuming this hedge fund has only one client). Over the year the hedge fund earns $10m by trading in the market. But since the pension fund owns the assets (limited partner), the gains belong to the pension plan (less performance fee, operating costs, and incentive allocation).

At the industry level, the total assets of hedge funds is $3 trillion. Let's assume they make 10% on average at the industry level. So they make $300b of gains, a large part of this would be made in non-US markets. Most of this gains actually belongs to the investors.

So how does Bernie raise hundreds of billions of dollars?

Wealth can be made, but not by gambling. I take it your "performance" is Wall Street Speak for winning. While one fund wins another fund loses. If wealth isn't being made, it's zero-sum.

Pension funds should not be invested with gamblers.

if pension funds should not be invested with hedge funds, should they be invested in the equity markets?

Should 401k be invested in equity markets?

So I'm asking you whether you think that 401k and pension funds should be invested in the equity markets?

Cheating bastards and send our kids to college.

I am guessing Goldman-Sachs (her sponsor) won't want to contribute a dime. I bet she wants taxpayers to foot the bill. These are the same people that can't afford to send their children to college and she wants them to pay higher taxes.

My amusing part is that you got no response, except the neutral party in this

Watching the first episode of The Newsroom right now, makes me want to continue doing what we are doing... quixotic and all.

http://gawker.com/5921256/heres-the-first-episode-of-hbos-the-newsroom-on-youtube

and policy is critical

don't taxpayers foot the bill for everything that Sanders wants as well?

the OP explains one method of getting the wealthy to pay their share.

this proposal is a pipe dream that won't raise enough money.

When Bernie is honest about the costs and who has to pay (middle class) I will listen to him.

I would remind people that for many years, community and state colleges in California were free, and the UC system was much cheaper than today. Somehow they managed to do it.

Also, perhaps related, the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. fluctuated between 69%-94% from the 1940s through the 1970s, and the economy did just fine.

Also...one of the ways Bill Clinton balanced the budget was by raising taxes slightly on the top 1.5% of earners.

That would be crickets, Alex. Ya don't bite the hand that's feeding you and has been feeding you for the last 15 years.