In New York, between 1970 and 1981, there was a stock transfer tax. Each year it brought in $300 million to the city. The common man benefited a great deal from it, especially teachers and nurses, municipal workers and so on. Salaries were much higher back then. For example, I'm a professor at the City University of New York and my salary, when adjusted for inflation, is around 30 percent less than the average salary of my senior colleagues who started in the 1970s. Important to note also is that when NY dropped the stock transfer tax back in 1981, Wall Street became an anomaly in the world. From Hong Kong to Germany, every nation with an exchange has a stock transfer tax, and these are not socialist places. They're rational ones. If the old stock transfer tax on Wall Street were re-instated, it would raise $11 billion per year. Opposition to the stock transfer tax is pure irrationalism, a naked attack on reason, having nothing to do with ideology. Tellingly, many rich people in NYC have been arguing lately for a re-instatement of the stock transfer tax, because of the budget crisis in NYC, the rising costs of healthcare, education, transportation, maintenance of the parks system, and so on. It's always the wannabe types, those whose biggest dream is to one day be a hedge fund manager themselves, that come out against it. Check them against the petty bourgeois types who backed Hitler in the 1930s and you'll find few differences.

Posted at April 2, 2008 2:53 PM in response to A Stock Transfer Tax: The Right Medicine for Wall Street