The authors remedy is a Financial Transactions Tax which appears to work well in low financial regulatory countries. It seems like a clean way to generate revenue and discourage casino like investing, without having to increase regulatory bureaucracy.
What say you?
The information came from the Credit Suisse 2014 Global Wealth Databook (GWD), which goes on to reveal much more about the disappearing middle class.
1. Each Year Since the Recession, America's Richest 1% Have Made More Than the Cost of All U.S. Social Programs
In effect, a reverse transfer from the poor to the rich. Even as conservatives blame Social Security for being too costly.
Much of the 1% wealth just sits there, accumulating more wealth. The numbers are nearly unfathomable. Depending on the estimate, the 1% took in anywhere from $2.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion per year. (All numeric analysis is detailed here.)
Even the smaller estimate of $2.3 trillion per year is more than the budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), Medicaid ($304 billion), and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC [Women, Infants, Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Housing).
2. Almost None of the New 1% Wealth Led To Innovation and Jobs
In 2005, for every $1 of financial wealth there was 66 cents of non-financial (home) wealth. Ten years later, for every $1 of financial wealth there was just 43 cents of non-financial (home) wealth.
What happens to all this financial wealth?
Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1% of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.
On the corporate side, stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they've been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends…………………………..
The FTT has extraordinary revenue-generating potential, on a global scale. The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that annual trading in derivatives had surpassed $1.14 quadrillion. Just one-tenth of one percent of that is a trillion dollars.
It's also a fair tax. While average Americans pay up to a 10% sales tax on shoes for the kids, millionaire investors pay a zero sales tax on financial purchases. They pay just a .00002% SEC fee (2 cents for every thousand dollars) for a financial instrument.
In addition, the FTT is easy to administer and difficult to evade. Clearing houses already review all trades, and serve as collection agencies for transaction fees.
And as evidence of its suitability, three of the top five countries on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom are Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland, all of whom have FTTs.
