Financial Transaction tax

Hello.

This morning we have the usual conservative politics with a new wave.  We have had the Tea Party /Right wing effort to stop an extension of the debt ceiling.

Now we have "moderate" proposal from the Gang of Six, which is essentially the Simpson-Bowles plan. That is another conservative, not so crazy, right wing assault on benefits and working people.   See the post below by Dean Baker, And, since it is not the crazy Tea Party, the press is picking up on it.

Get as many posts up as you can, letters to the editor, responses on web news stories.  In each case argue for the opposite- a financial transaction tax.  The information you need is on the DSA site;  here. http://www.dsausa.org/docs/taxday.html

intro; 

A: Yes.  Despite what conservatives often say, there are several potential sources of money to pay for the needs of our country.  Perhaps the most promising is a tax on the trading of financial assets, a financial transaction tax, often called an FTT or a “Tax on Wall Street Speculators.”

Q:  How would an FTT work?

A: An FTT would be a small tax on all trading in stocks, currencies, and debt products such as treasury bills and bonds (and futures and options contracts on all of these). Think of it as a very small sales tax. It could be a tax of $1 on every $400 of stocks traded (0.25%); one-quarter of one percent, and $1 on every $800 dollars of currency or debt traded (0.125%), one-eighth of one percent.

Q: How much money could it raise?

A: This tax would have raised between $750 billion and $1.2 trillion during each of the past five years (2005 – 2009).  With that amount of revenue we could put a large number of people back to work on the projects that are needed to rebuild our economy.

We need to create a message that is repeated and repeated.  Fund job growth, not budget cuts.  And, we should not get too engaged in which funds to cut.  We need to become an echo machine that reproduces a message in numerous formats. For today, the message is a Financial Transaction Tax; not cuts to medicare and social security.

Certainly Facebook and other social media.  The idea is focus.  for just 3 days, repeat and repeat. Financial transaction tax. Not cuts to social security and medicare. It also helps if you can link to similar pieces, that raises the Google counting.

BTW. I am sitting here in Beautiful Santa Cruz, California.  The beach is incredible.  But, I can get out at least 6 posts today.

Its just a a suggestion.  Not a command.  :-)