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Bill Gates Advocates Tax On Financial Transactions
First time accepted submitter wanzeo writes "With the current G-20 summit dominated by global financial uncertainty, previously unsuccessful tax strategies are getting new attention. In a short interview with the BBC, Bill Gates explains his support for a potential tax on financial transactions. The concept is sometimes called the Tobin tax after its originator, Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin, who first put forth the idea in 1972. Gates points to the success of Britain's Security Settlement Tax, and suggests that large economies like Germany, France, and the U.S. have expressed interest in his plan."
That is why I play the Air Banjo.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
isnt it more meaningful if they charged this on securities transactions on wall street? why tax the common man just for financial transactions?
This might be one of those rare times when I actually agree with Bill Gates. A tax on financial transactions should reduce or stop some of the most exploitive behavior in the financial world. "High frequency" trading would become much less profitable, as would the even less ethical exploit of attempting to generate out of date quotes by overloading a trading system system.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
But there is a Bank of Sweden prize in memory of Nobel for economics, unlike astrology, professional wrestling, or air guitar.
Did you read the next page of the article with the guy dressed up like Link from The Legend of Zelda? Proposals include a tax on large trades in stocks, bonds, derivatives, or foreign currency.
... but the government needs to overhaul the system of taxation to a simple system without loopholes, and stop trying to figure out a way to tax everything we do. Once upon a time we didn't even need income taxes; times change, but having the government intrude on every aspect of our lives so that they can tax every little thing is not the way to go.
You have to ask what is the purpose of taxes to begin with; why do we need them and what's the most effective way to accomplish that, not keep coming up with new schemes that likely can have negative impacts on the economy. Every time the government creates a new tax, the cost of compliance adds to the amount that the government collects; more accountants need to be paid, more paperwork needs to be filled out.... the cost of compliance for the current system (not the taxes paid, but the resources spent figuring out what to pay). The tax foundation projects compliance costs to be in the hundreds of billions (Total Federal Income Tax Compliance Costs, 1990-2015).
There's got to be a better way - overhaul the tax system, don't keep adding to the mess it already is.
If we don't stop this nonsense, we're going to be taxed for every action we take and the fourth amendment will be a joke. You'll have a federal tax on food (eat beef? Well, beef causes global warming, so you'll have to pay), a commute to work tax; have coffee break tax; drive anywhere tax (this will be beyond what we already pay in gasoline taxes). Every time money changes hands? Is that what you really want? Lend me $20 and pay a tax? How about both of us? Lender tax and borrower tax, and then a pay-you-back (loan repayment) tax. How about a tax on getting money from your ATM? Or transferring money from one account to another? Or every time you pay a bill? It's simply ridiculous to continue along this path.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The article says very little. At best he could watch TFA. and even then, nothing in it goes against what he said, that the US rich would turn it into a screw the middle class and poor objective. So I think its fair to say AC, you are the moron here. In your best case, an idiot at presenting an opposing argument.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
There are no Nobel prizes for...economics.
While, strictly speaking, that's true, it's close enough to the truth as to make little or no difference. There is a periodic prize that's awarded at the same time the Nobel prizes are awarded. This particular prize is given for achievements in economics, and the decision as to whom to award the gift to is made by the same people who award the Nobel prizes. It's called The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Your statement is little more than an exercise in pedantics.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Many liberals who think George Soros is a great guy for supporting this "tax on the rich" don't realize that Soros is one of the rich guys who stands to profit handsomely from it:
In other words, it's not clear that the Tobin tax would actually make the markets safer for small investors or hold the high-power players at Goldman Sachs accountable. The only thing that is clear is that very rich position traders with the ability to move significant amounts of capital will gain a very profitable advantage.
Part of this is aimed at punishing the high speed traders. I think a better approach to that would be to pass a law requiring full access to the stock exchanges at very low rates. The stock exchanges are hardly capitalist to begin with, so pushing a massive unfunded mandate on them is just a price they pay for the privilege of maintaining one of the last vestiges of mercantilist privilege in the modern world.
The summary says "large economies like Germany, France, and the U.S. have expressed interest in his plan". That's not what I hear in the video. The host says america doesn't want to do it and then bill says they're unlikely to do it. The host then says china and britain don't want to do it either, and "the list goes on", and bill smiles and nods in agreement.
My feelings is that banks are heaviest lobby what are in this world - they own money we need to keep to run this charade called Capitalism. They will hold governments hostage til they will relent on this.
I really hope that someone will proove me wrong, but this doesn't give any hope:
" The Chancellor George Osborne has delayed his return to London from Brussels this lunchtime after a row over proposals for a financial transaction tax at a meeting of European Finance Ministers.
According to sources Mr Osborne asked what was the point in even having a conversation about the financial transaction tax given that it was going to be rejected and then asked if it was âoethe best way to spend our timeâ.
I understand that the Chancellor said no bank would end up paying the tax and the final payer would be pensioners."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15640299
As said Will Emerson in Margin Call (played briliantly by Paul Bettany): "One thing I can say for sure: they never loose their money".
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
The "Tobin tax" specifically targets currency trading, not "financial transactions" in general. In fact, the title/body of the original article are so misleading, it should probably be yanked as troll bait. All the gory details can be had here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
And suddenly cash is illegal! Why? Because they can't tax every cash transaction. Now paying a kid 5 bucks to cut your lawn would be tax evasion.
I am sure Bill can afford paying extra. For an average investor it means my cost of investing - and cost of all financial services everyone is using - will increase. Probably by a small margin, depending how greedy the government would be - but still. Personally I am always against any additional tax that does not bring any value to me as to the user of the service in question. Am I going to be better protected against corporate fraud? Against my broker's misconduct? Against other types of crime that are associated with financial industry? No, this tax is to patch a small hole somewhere else. If I am to pay extra for a particular service, I have to be compensated by lowering the generic income tax. I am all for "pay per use" model, even when it is applied to the government system - but it has to be fair and "pay per use" implies "do not pay for what you do not use". As long as this rule does not work, I would be against any additional specialized taxes.
That is why I play the Air Banjo.
if toy play the air banjo you deserve a prize in air currency (also known as BitCoins)
If you put a 1% or .5% transaction fee on all stocks/commodities/money exchanges, it would put a hurt on high frequency traders. People would be more inclined to invest for a longer run. The tax should be completely undodgeable with no writeoffs being able to prevent it as it comes part of the cost of the transaction.
God spoke to me
I just wonder why he forgot about taxing the charities? For example, if you give more than 1 billion dollars for the poor Somalian babies, you have to pay at least flat 15%. Sounds good, ain't so?
Yeah, why give the guy any credit for being charitable? He should be more like the Koch brothers and just use his fortune to fuck over the middle class directly. That's how you measure integrity these day...
Remember, it's not The Bank's fault they ripped us all off for billions, personal responsibility only applies to poor people, not mega-corporations. I mean, next thing you'll tell me corporations are people...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post..
With that attitude, I'm not surprised.
I don't know about Gates, but Buffet is well-known for bemoaning the fact that he pays less (as a percentage) in taxes than his secretary does. I have never heard of him advocating any changes that would increase the tax burden on the Middle-class relative to his own. Quite the opposite, actually.
There isn't much real information in the "article". There is a 2 minute video of Bill Gates discussing in very broad terms his support of a transaction tax, and his opinion that it will never happen in the US. There is a link to wikipedia describing a Tobin tax, which is a tax on currency exchange transactions. But Gate's doesn't seem to be discussing a tax on currency transactions. Then there is a link to an image of 2007 British tax code, which doesn't exactly explain what Bill is in favor of enacting either.
I sympathize with the parent's outlook. How can we trust US government officials to not slant the playing field toward the wealthy (their "base", as Bush famously called them)?
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Yeah, why give the guy any credit for being charitable?
Much of Bill Gates' money is ill gotten gains. The foundations of his fortune were built when MS was breaking the law prior to their anti-trust trial. They were convicted of abusing their monopoly. Much of the money made afterwards was from the inertia built from the earlier crimes committed. If justice had been served, MS and Bill Gates' fortunes would be 1/10 what they are now and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I refuse to go along with the Bill Gates kumbaya group-think and praise someone for giving away money that wasn't rightfully theirs in the first place.
This is a tax that will be paid almost entirely by the middle class. The wealthy have ways to avoid it, and low income folks will mostly not see any impact. But for the vast majority of the middle class, either working for an employer that practically requires pay to be made direct deposit, with loans that are direct draft, with lots of reliance on banking transactions, most of which are entirely unavoidable, will find their accounts draining even faster. Isn't the gouging by the banks of their small customers enough for people to deal with, now the government is going to dig in and make the account drain even faster?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Nearly all of Bill Gate's money will be going to charity once he dies. His kids are only getting something like 10mil a piece, which is is nothing compared to the lot.
Here's my economic theory of taxing the wealthy. You won't find it in any textbook. It may be right, or it may be crazy...
There are two types of wealthy people: the ones that actually create economic value (the Buffets, Jobs, and Gates of the world), and the ones who don't.
The latter became rich, not because of what they accomplished, but because they knew the right people. Went to the right schools. Had executive hair. Had charisma, but no actual ability hiding behind it.
If you're actually a source of economic value, taxes don't affect you as much as you'd think. Government takes, gives to the poor, makes them a bit richer, and they end up buying more of your product. There may not be a 1:1 correlation, but $1 in new taxes probably ends up being far less than $1 out of their pocket when all is said and done. It may even make you more money.
If, on the other hand, you're rich purely because of luck, then a higher tax rate affects you a lot more, because you can't count on the wealth you lose being recirculated to you. It will end up going to an actual value creator and not you.
That's why the Buffets and Gates of the world don't sweat higher taxes too much, and why you hear so much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Wall Street types over the very idea.
My 2 cents, anyway.
Until this minute, I never knew that someone could be as unintelligent as you. If you're trolling, try harder.
He seems pissed, not unintelligent. Can't say I blame him.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This is so typical. Excuse me if I assume you are American. High-speed trading is the seed to the next financial meltdown. I am not an expert, and no I can not explain exactly how it will happen. But I have enough common sense to bet you one very nice bottle of redwine that it will lead to disaster, unless of course our politicians exceptionally get their shit together and stamp it out like the rotten pile of shit it is. I like Sarkozy's idea: a tax based on how long you keep the shares. No tax if you keep it longer than a year, 1% for longer than 6 months etc. I can pick any "occupy wallstreet" moron of the pavement and explain him how bonds and shares allow people to start businesses and create jobs. He WILL understand that their existence is beneficially to our society. I still have to meet the first guy who can explain me the benefits of microsecond trading to our economy.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
RTFA
Nice try, but the FP summary includes far MORE detail than TFA - Proving, amusingly enough, that you haven't R'd TFA.
Could you post a citation that shows that to be legally binding? Otherwise, it isn't worth the electrons you used to post it with.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Mr. Gates who has already moved most of his assets into a loophole (sorry, "Foundation") to protect his progeny's inheritance from taxes, certainly shouldn't worry about the future.
I think the Gates Foundation would be in more than a little trouble if they started making large payments to Melinda or Bill's children. Both Bill Gates (and Warren Buffett as well) have made it quite clear that their philosophy is that they don't want their kids to inherit ridiculously huge gobs of money, just something in the low 7 figures.
I am officially gone from
We get so excited about the debate of "should we tax or shouldn't we" -- we forget the debate about; "Why do we have a 'Wall Street' to begin with?"
Turning over a stock in anything less than three years, and definitely less than 1 year is NOT an investment in a company -- it's an attempt to "play the market." One or two day traders might win at this -- but the professionals, who have machines that can trade in nanoseconds and shave time with the competition by using shorter network lengths to WS computers for trades are going to win. Market manipulation is also too lucrative to worry about the SEC and such -- much better to buy the regulators (as we've seen).
>> However, when we consider the Trillions more that our Government had to bail out Wall Street more than just the public "TARP funds" -- and that banks like Bank of America might be posting bigger losses in the range of $75 Trillion with the FDIC backing them. So a few pennies a trade will require a few hundred years just to PAY BACK expenses they've incurred -- much less "cover" future risks.
Another way to say this is; who is MORE crazy? The person who wants to tax the Mafia or the person who thinks you cannot trust the mafia in the first place? There is no way a group that can get the FDIC to cover $75 Trillion in "bad bets" after the fact, and AFTER a bail out for the same "mistake" (I call it fraud), is a group that CANNOT get around any tax. The Day Trader will see a tax, but if there is enough of a fee to stop the market manipulators -- be sure that they will get compensated where you are not looking.
Wall Street's EXCUSE to suck up 40% of all profits is that they help provide funds to let companies grow -- having seen the rampant leveraged buyouts, the VC funds used to sell away parts of companies, and the shuttering of tens of thousands of businesses to provide "fodder" for Hedge Funds -- it's a bit like allowing a Mercenary to continue to operate in a country after wiping out a town, because you've seen him walk a little old lady across the street once.
I once made my living with Financial Services companies -- but it felt a bit like carrying ammunition for a mercenary. Biting the hand that feeds you should be a mark of integrity, and I'd like to make a living building something or making the world a better place. ALL Financial services are a ruse, because they are predicated on "investing wisely" -- which is always a pitch of "getting back more than you put in." For every wise investment to do better than just the average of stocks, SOMEONE has to lose. By the time a company has stocks on Wall Street, it's either on someone's menu or it has all the money it needs -- and some VC firm reaped that benefit before you did.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
A business has accountability to its shareholders. Governments lack even that weak of a damper on their abuses.
Yes, because so many rich people, like the Koch brothers
I fail to see how what the Koch brothers do or don't do in any way relates to Bill Gates? Is there some sort of quantum entanglement that I'm not aware of between all of these people? Please enlighten me. Or are you just trying to excuse Bill Gates by saying someone else is worse? With that line of reasoning, everybody can play along and be guilt-free. Hey, that guy might have killed 12 people but at least he's not Pol Pot, herp derp. That's dangerous thinking.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Don't forget giving your kids their allowance, paying their tuition, receiving your deceased loved one's life insurance benefits, paying your medical bills, paying your rent/mortgage, and buying groceries.
What we really also need to pay attention to is the real motive behind this: eliminating cash and giving government a detailed view of our private financial matters. We would hardly be secure in our papers if we had to show them all to the State.
How many common people do you know that change money into different currencies in large amounts on a regular basis? This is a tax to reduce the volatility of exchange rates. With a sensible floor say 10k a year to account for international travelers, foreign currency collectors (like stamps). Remember this is only on direct exchanges of currency not changing currency to buy something with it. The point it to put a damper on short term currency speculation. That is a market that purely gambling it does not help the economy. I would also like to see a large tax of stocks the progressively lessons over time. Again day trading does not help the economy it only parasitically feeds off it. Stocks are a method to raise large amounts of capital and spread around risk.
No sir I dont like it.
Always beware of a rich philanthropist with a new tax idea.
-Xen
Have federal taxes been as low as they are now in your lifetime? They're lower than they've been in mine, and I'm 59 years old. So how can you say "The last thing needed is more taxes?" The fact is, spending is too high and taxes are too low. All government revenues are down because most of us aren't earning as much money -- lots of us are out of work, business is slow for the small businessman, so he is paying far less tax than 10 years ago.
Here's a bit of a parable for you. A man marries a spendthrift woman who keeps getting him farther and farther in debt, and he finally divorces her. He then, of course, cuts back on his spending -- but there's that damned interest, plus his employer has cut back on his hours. He stops eating out, stops going out, gets rid of cable TV but he's still being eaten by debt.
So what does he do now? He gets another job -- in short, while decreasing his expenditures, he increases his revenues.
Repeal the Bush era tax cuts for the rich. Do it NOW. It was supposed to stimulate the economy, and failed miserably because wealth doesn't trickle down, it flows upwards. The contractor doen't create wealth, the people he hires do.
In my grandfather's day when federal income tax was brand new, only the rich paid Federal income tax!
Free Martian Whores!
They are about control. It is all about politicians exerting control over money so as to remain in power as long as possible. They dole out favors and punishment in the tax code to serve their needs. The worst are ideologues who don't care what negative side effects are as long as they see their dream fulfilled. Another use is to hide the true cost of this government from the people. If they were taxed directly, instead of indirectly by the embedded taxes on profits, many would be screaming for change.
Getting Washington to give up the control the current tax system has about as much chance as getting a three pack a day smoker to quit, they won't until its too late. They don't care because they are the true one percent
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
While I'm on the fence about the tax, I am definitely with you on making high frequency trading as difficult and least profitable as possible.
Most people know this and the only people who like high-frequency trading are those who profit from it directly. The markets work for these traders and these traders work for the markets.
Normal people and the companies listed on the markets are hurt by this arrangement. They would gladly take their business to another market that had more sane trading rules.
Which gets to the actual problem - regulations on securities markets. We have a classic example of regulatory capture here, so starting a competing market is effectively impossible. NASDAQ couldn't happen today.
Like anything else there needs to be a market in markets (sup, dawg), and this has been prevented from happening, so we wind up in this surrealistic position with markets that hurt most of its participants to enrich the very few (a net transfer of wealth). The 1% isn't just on Wall Street - their accomplices in Washington are essential to the mechanism.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What these tax proponents don't understand is that people will not let themselves be buttf*cked if they can pass it on to someone else. "Yeah, yeah, let's screw the big banks and corporations!!! *insert really lame chanting*" Oh, I guess you didn't count on lower interest rates to depositors and new fees for everything. Guess you didn't count on higher product prices. Guess you didn't count on corporations laying people off to pay their new higher tax bills. Vindictive taxation never ends up impacting the original target.
Poor Mr. Buffet, too bad he doesn't have the option of paying extra taxes...
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Oh, wait... http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
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Someone should tell him about this, he'll be so relieved...
And thus it won't affect individuals who use their rupees to buy lamp oil, rope, or bombs.
Buffet is well-known for bemoaning the fact that he pays less (as a percentage) in taxes than his secretary does
1. it's not true
2. he is the boss there - he could go with the fat wage with much higher marginal tax rate, but chose the dividends
3. corporate tax should be included in these calculations - it diminishes the pool of money that goes to him.
Here:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111019/17424316421/louisiana-makes-it-illegal-to-use-cash-secondhand-sales.shtml
While I agree w/ the idea of taxing large transactions (esp. when money crosses a national border), I think the implementation needs to be carefully worded and reviewed and to have a lengthy virtual test phase (where transactions over a reasonably long period of time are evaluated as to how much the tax would have been on same, who would have been affected, and what effect the tax would have had on whether or no the transaction would have occurred).
In particular, the definition of large transaction has to be such that it will move upward w/ inflation.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Putting the tax burden on those who insist on playing with depositor money, privatizing profits and socializing losses is a start towards fairness. Not much of a start, granted, but a start. Unfortunately, money = unaccountable political power. Until congress and the class from which most of congress comes (i.e. the wealthy) are barred from office, this will never happen.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Bill Gates can say anything he wants but until he LOBBIES it will not matter; 1 party may suck up and worship their rich masters but when one of them goes all "socialist" they won't pay attention unless somebody pays them. The other party just says 1 thing and bows to big money. Excluding of course the "true believer" suckers who were never intended to get into office (Mrs Bachmann) and the couple honest ones.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Paris Hilton makes a ton of money on her own. Granted, she can do that because she is a celebrity because she was born in an ungodly rich family, but still she knows perfectly well how to profit from her popularity.
Also 100% inheritance tax would have one effect i am 100% sure you wouldn't like. Soon everything would be owned by the state and the corporations - they don't die and would never pay that tax.
My guess is that ANY new system would be superior to the existing system.
You can argue all day about the regressive nature of a flat tax or other alternative systems -- and be right -- but I think that eliminating the loopholes, distortions, biases and in some cases, single-business advantages that the current system has would be so economically beneficial that the somewhat nit-picky complaints about alternative systems wouldn't really be noticed.
In the end, I don't think the basic principals of our existing tax system are the issue as much as the corrosive nature of our tax code is on our economy.
I don't have a copy of his will or anything, but Gates, Buffett (whom Gates convinced) and something like 40 other billionaires all signed on to the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge. IIRC, that happened after he'd already donated dump-trucks full of money to museums, theaters, schools and various other stuff through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I know some people complain about how the foundation manages its charity, but there's no shirking the fact that the man has spent millions (billions?) on some really good things and pledged billions more on a schedule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giving_Pledge
The point is so many people fall all over themselves to defend the repugnant crap the Koch brothers are doing with their fortune, meanwhile Bill Gates actually uses his money for good and people crawl out of the woodwork to make sure no one gives him any credit whatsoever.
Do you have any reason to believe the people allegedly doing all of this are the same people? Isn't it possible that whoever is praising the Koch brothers are not the same people decrying Bill Gates?
According to conservative ideology, Bill Gates was the poster boy for success
I don't understand, are you for or against conservatism? Do you have the official conservative guidebook that says unequivocally that Bill Gates is the "poster boy" for anything? Otherwise, you're using a whole lot of words just to prove that you don't really know what you are talking about.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
When they started strong arming windows onto OEM vendors, OS2 was a potential adversary.
but you can buy a hell of a lot of hookers and coke for $10mil.
A education that emphasises good citizenship and social morality would be better for their future than trying to make them merely 'rich' rather than 'super rich'
This would tend to make people grow up in poverty if they come from large families. Here, a fix: each person (babies included) gets taxed according to their share of family income.
Example: Bob makes $100,00 and Mary makes $50,000 for a total of $150,000. They have 3 kids, so 5 people in the family. Each family member thus has a $30,000 share of the income. This family pays the same total tax as 5 individuals who each earn $30,000. Normally this would be less than the tax on 1 individual who earns $150,000 because of tax brackets.
Taxes are doomed. The Internet has given the rich and powerful a way to work in unison to stay ahead of any government regulations. The loose affiliations are becoming more sophisticated and will soon act as a union of common interests to evade any nation's taxes. The only way to overcome this would be for governments to unite in their revenue generation and think strategically. Ha ha!
On the other hand, poverty is increasing, and the poor never had the organizational abilities. Expect to see a revival of criminal debt and debtors' prisons, a.k.a. criminal indenture. Once the poor are disenfranchised, they no longer have representation. That will lead to career criminals who are, in effect, slaves. Of course, everyone believes this will never happen, and that denial is essential to its genesis.
Are there any hidden loopholes for banks to give them a competitive advantage over non-bank financial institutions in this proposed law? Isn't this potentially yet another surtax on a already taxable commerce? What about cross border trade? What about cross ocean trade? Suppliers in differing countries would probably want to be paid in their local currency at the best rate possible. What about immigrants sending money back home to their parents or wife and children?
Bill Gates is too rich to care or has tax accountants lined up to use loopholes in that law so of course he can support it. He is retired with more money than he knows what to do with. This can only end up hurting the little guy and benefiting the big banks.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The wages paid to employees are not taxed a income. Thus, your company does not pay tax on your salary.
Sales tax is State and local, not Federal. Feel free to move to a State that does have sales tax. For example, Oregon, Montana or New Hampshire. Feel free to rent if you don't want to pay property tax.
Yes, we need to drastically reduce military and conflict spending. But you do have a degree of control over many of the taxes you pay.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
As long as it makes that E-Trade baby cry, I'm all for it.
I8-D
if he proposed exponential taxing scheme on intellectual property (you can extend your property rights indefinitely, each extension costs twice what the last one did). all these billionaires coming out and proposing that OTHER well-to-do people get taxed don't impress me very much. increasing the cost of IP would hit Gates' bottom line. wall street is just the boogie man of choice atm. before that it was oil companies. before that it was "big pharma". oh, and before that... it was MS. ever thought that the only reason Gates wants to tax HFT is that it employs a lot of programmers? This increases average market price of programmers. And that's Gates' bottom line. Do you really wanna shill for a market place where Bill Gates gets to reduce his costs by slashing average programmer's salary?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
A small tax on financial transactions affects high volume speculators disproportionately does little to the average 401K holder.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are right. Buffet has been speaking about this for some time. Gates will probably start talking more since he's started taking the long view rather than the competitive view. Folks can whine all they want about MS competitive practices but Gates is putting his personal money where is mouth is. (See recent Malaria vaccine results)
Could you post any evidence that shows he wouldn't go through with his pledge?
As far as I can see, his pledge has more substance than your post and what you are trying to imply with it.
"cell phone bill being several dollars higher than it should be"....that is not a tax, it is a fee levied by your carrier worded to appear as a tax.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Corporate Inheritance Tax!
If a corporation gets too old, has an unfortunately accident, or just had an unlucky roll of the genetic dice when it was founded, then its corporate spinoffs don't get to live high on the hog simply due to the accident of who spun them off.
Who wouldn't support a politician who enacted such a tax? Who would lobby against it?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Actually, the military spending (Not just DOD) is actually ~60% of federal spending when you include everything related to defense including homeland security, CIA etc, military projects at NASA, veterans affairs etc plus the interest on the debts directly related to these projects.
Right now the DOD (only about half of all defense spending) is fully 50% of the world spending on military. The US is only 20% of the world GDP. therefore the CORRECT spending on the military is actually about 25% of what we actually spend...
Social security is not a problem. It is completely funded through payroll taxes.
Medicare IS a problem but the solutions is politically unpalitable... True comprehensive coverage of every single person with a reduction in actual benefits (primarily not offering MRIs when X-rays are sufficient)
Yeah, that makes sense. Fuck starving Somalian babies, the 1%.
Oh, wait... they mean the _top_ 1% when they say that, don't they. That makes a little more sense.
Great idea. Just imagine all of those lazy 10 year old brats being kicked out of their homes when their parents die in an accident.
Now if this tax only applied after a million or so, it could be a good idea.
Of course it would also be completely impossible to implement with all those offshore tax shelters. Who needs to officialy inherit something, when they have access to all those Swiss bank accounts.
Why not put a tax on stock trading which would encourage long term investments. Currently in the U.S. capital gains are all treated equally, you pay the same rate if you hold the stock for a few seconds or a few years. Why not increase the capitol gains tax on short term transactions and reduce it on long term investments. For example...
If you hold on to the stock for five years, your capital gains tax would be decreased by 50%.
If you hold on to the stock for one year, your capital gains tax would be decreased by 25%.
If you hold on to the stock for one month, your capital gains tax would be unchanged.
If you hold on to the stock for one day, your capital gains tax would be increased 25%.
If you hold on to the stock for one hour, your capital gains tax would be increased by 50%.
If you hold on to the stock for one minute, your capital gains tax would be doubled.
Of course, I haven't considered what the actual numbers should be. Instead of benchmarks, the changes could be made continuously so there might not be actual steps but a gradual increase in the tax rate as the time scale decreases. If you want, you could adjust the numbers so it could be revenue neutral.
I love the "Bill Gates gives to charity to save money!" conspiracy assholes. They seem to ignore the fact that he is giving away most of his money. There's no profit angle on his charities.
Care to bet whether any one of Gates' beneficiaries (other than his wife) get more than $1 billion?
So your new to slashdot?
You are a petty, clueless asshole operating on a total lack of any credible evidence.
But carry on in your angry delusions. When Gates' children make more money through this foundation than they would have without it, let me know. I'll be flying a pig on a freezing day in hell.
You clearly don't understand that if this was the goal it would be pointless - why not just give them $10 billion each? I'll tell you why - because you're fucking stupid.
Investigate who gives more of their income away to charity, conservatives or liberals. It will change your opinion if you're honest with yourself.
Point of clarification: The most frequently proposed number I've seen is a 0.01% tax on the value of each transaction. This would effectively eliminate High Freq Trading (which nets ballpark 0.001% per trade... millions of times an hour), but have no noticeable effect on buy-and-hold investing.
The HFT people are already taxing the public -- they do nothing* to allocate capital to good companies, take money out of markets, and have insane systemic instability problems to boot. Having this go to the treasury instead will knock the instability problem on it's ass. In a sane polity, this would be an easy, obvious technical solution. Only when Wall Street writes its own regulations (such as a Congressional ban on regulating CDOs!) does this become controversial.
*They say they create liquidity. I say that once we're dealing in milliseconds, liquidity is already achieved. Microsecond liquidity serves no social purpose.
The general tone here is something like: "high-frequency trading destroys small business and jobs, it games the system, it was a cause of the collapse; ergo, this tax will both raise revenue and help solve the HFT problem (volatility, etc...)".
First off: beware a tax that is so oversold. A tiny transaction tax is going to either do nothing or slow the flow of capital. It comes with a compliance cost for everyone (plus a large cost of auditing). It makes capital more expensive and decreases investment (we'd prefer the opposite).
Secondly, a little more humility is in order. It is trite to assume that all traders are gaming the system. Sure, they work in tiny spreads, but by in large, trading facilitates capital flow *to the companies/governments/etc* that can use it effectively.
See Kenneth Rogoff's response to the Tobin Tax here and then hit me with a riposte:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/should-we-tax-financial-transactions/246188/#
-Andrew
-- I'm embarassed to look like Hemos.
That is a red herring. Buffet is advocating correcting the rules of the game. You are suggesting that he play by a different set of rules, and not interfere with those abusing the rules. That doesn't solve the problem.
As the wildly different comments on this thread show, taxation is a very complex subject.
Theoretically, in the USA, people are entitled to the results of their labor. When someone takes your money from you by force (or threat of force) it is called theft. The people who advocate involuntary taxation are those who think that government is more important than peoples' rights.
The best plan I've seen so far is the Fair Tax Plan http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer . It still is not perfect, but it is about 90% better than what we have (based on the assumption that 90% of the the IRS would be eleiminated).
Of course, the key word is "involuntary"; What would happen if we had a national referendum and the PEOPLE set the tax rate? Reviewed every presidential election year?
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
It's all Hitler's fault, because now you can end any argument like this with "At least they aren't as bad as Hitler".
Because it's so hard to be worse than him, even if you really try.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
There are several reasons to oppose such a tax. First, contrary to public opinion, trade doesn't hurt anyone and is one of the few things that is near universally beneficial. People don't trade unless they want to. I oppose sales taxes and value-added taxes for the same reason.
Second, if the US taxes trade, then the trade goes elsewhere. I see this as a very crippling move against any security trading in the US. While people harp on the parasitic nature of finance and market trading, it still remains that this sector does a lot of business and brings in a lot of money for the US.
Third, it dissuades speculators. I know a lot of people, including this Tobin guy, think speculation is bad. Keep in mind that speculators are rewarded for guessing the future direction of the market and punished for guessing wrong. These people are often the first feedback on spectacularly bad business strategies and government financial policy (for example, "it tanked while he talked").
Actually, his company does pay tax on his salary (the employer side of FICA/FUTA).
And renting is not a means of avoiding property tax. It's just a means of paying it on a monthly basis through your landlord.
But that is part of the rules of the game, Belial6. Anyone, not just a self-serving noise-maker, can donate to the US government. So Buffet wants to complain about not paying enough taxes? There's already a built-in mechanism for addressing that.
It's also worth noting at this point that Warren Buffet doesn't pay a large tax share because most of his wealth is unrealized capital gains. I don't hear of him advocating any changes in tax policy that would force him to start paying taxes on those unrealized gains. So not only doesn't he do as he says, his overall tax burden won't change significantly even if we did follow his tax recommendations!
Instead, we see that Buffet through a variety of his holdings, such as his insurance businesses, would profit from this state of affairs since the tax change would encourage the wealthy to seek tax shelters and the like (which Buffet can provide).
I was thinking more like "let's build up internal trading markets in lands where the tobin tax does not apply, we will be taxed only the I/O from that market, we will be able to keep doing real time speculation".
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
What's the difference between taxing transactions or gains? Seems like the transaction tax would punish those that are not good at playing the market.
How about the government finds a better way to be a steward of our resources rather than finding more ways to vampire our retirement planning?
wah wah someone else has more than I do
He seems pissed, not unintelligent. Can't say I blame him.
I can.
The complainer is a lowlife. The lowlife is pissed because someone has more than he does. The lowlife thinks that he is entitled to take other people's money. The lowlife thinks that people who spend their time trolling Slashdot (yes, I am aware of the irony) instead of learning how financial markets work, upgrading his skills, and in general developing a fucking work ethic, should get free money from people who... you know... work for a living, who build things instead of parasitize them, and who don't spend every last penny on Starbucks swill, glowy fans for their PCs, and beer. Here we have a lowlife who does not know that Gates has already transferred most of his wealth to his philanthropic foundation, and that he has already announced that his children will get "only" about ten million each... but hey! Who cares about truth when you can have outrage instead? Who cares about earning a living when you can just have the tax man take it from someone else and give it to you?
Yes, I'd say I can blame him. Or to paraphrase someone else, "read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book, buy some land, buy some land, buy some goddamned land, fuck spinning rims". It's not Bill Gates' job or obligation to subsidize stupidity or to sponsor the race to abandon all personal responsibility.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
The part of the rules of the game that are broken is that rich people don't have to pay their fair share of taxes. Warren Buffet giving every penny he has to the US Government would not fix the problem. Changing the tax system would.
Claiming that he should just give his money away is a flippant ridiculous answer. It is similar to telling people who point out that the planet is overpopulated that if they think the planet is over populated, they should just kill themselves. It is neither a legitimate answer, nor helpful. The sad thing is that I think there are a lot of people who actually believe it is legitimate.
Everybody that thought buying a house was an 'investment', and that prices on land would always continue to rise.
Everybody who thinks gambling on the market is a sure way to pay for retirement (401k).
Everyone who believes in magic invisible hands that eliminate the need for regulation.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Uh, no. That's stupid. As the other post pointed out, that would result in people getting kicked out on the street when their parents died. He mentioned minors, which is bad enough, but I think we can agree that perhaps some college kid living at home should get to keep a house over his head if his parents die.
Or, heck, in states without automatic joint property laws, if someone bought a house, got married, and then died...now the spouse has no property.
A better idea would be something like 100% over $1,000,000, including property. Or maybe you can give $500,000 each to any immediately family member (children, spouse, siblings, parents), plus three more people.
And you're otherwise restrict to $10,000, which you can give to as many people as you want. Actually, there already is a yearly limit under which gifts are not taxed, either $5000 or $10,000, I forget. So at death we could just pretend they get 'one more year'.
Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure we need to worry about any of that. If we just restrict each individual person to getting $500,000, that would probably be enough by itself. It's not really 'How much they give away.', it's more 'How much one person gets.'. If some billionaire gives a half a million dollars to 2000 people, well, the loss of tax revenue sucks, but we've stopped the 'money never leaves the family' problem. (Barring illegal stuff like 'I'll get a hundred friends, give them each $500,000, and they'll then hand 90% of that money over to my son.')
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The Tobin tax as it was originally conceived is a knee-jerk reaction to the problem of speculation. It will harm all market participants, both speculators and non-speculators, because both will take actions to avoid the tax. The transactions cost incurred for avoiding the tax, coupled with the tax itself, are harmful to the market.
The problem is speculation, and I don't claim to have a full-on solution, but see the * below for a solution idea that may be a bit of a tangent.
Even so, I do aplaud Bill Gates and other leaders for discussing things. There may be some good to come out of all of this discussion, but I don't think the Tobin tax or any similar tax is one of them.
*Permit currency creation: For instance, permit corporations and persons to create their own "currencies", backed by whatever they see fit (oil, gold, silver, other commodities, a basket of Government currencies, their own bartered labor, etc.). I don't have the entire solution here, the idea would need to be refined, but it could bring a significant net gain to the currency problem. I mean, we all know and expect the dollar will "die" some day - in the end it is only a piece of paper or a bank balance - and so this could replace it...
No, it won't; at least, not for me. Not sure if you're referring to Arthur C. Brooks's "Who Really Cares" (Basic Books, 2006)... if so, please do yourself a favor and read some of the critiques out there. Brooks used varying confidence intervals to manipulate his data... namely, to show that liberal and conservative religious people give at the same rate. Most of his statistical analyses in the book use a 0.5 confidence interval, but curiously he chose to use 0.1 for that comparison. I wonder why?
The true correlation is that religious people give more than secular people. The least-giving cohort when you examine charitable giving by religious|secular and conservative|liberal is secular conservatives.
Seems to me that you're barking up the wrong tree.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Obviously, no... he did not use bold in any of his html.
:)
Also, your mother is APK.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Just thought I'd point out that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is focused more on health care and disease eradication in the third world than any of the things you mentioned (though they all have value IMO).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The part of the rules of the game that are broken is that rich people don't have to pay their fair share of taxes.
Voluntary overpayment of taxes is allowed by that rule. So no rules are broken. But that would require Buffet to put his money where his mouth is.
It is similar to telling people who point out that the planet is overpopulated that if they think the planet is over populated, they should just kill themselves.
Another case where someone's mouth doesn't match their actions. Keep in mind that this sort of whiner usually is ignorant of demographic trends and supports a variety of chilling population control schemes. Sometimes they go as far as to advocate "voluntary" extinction. So yes, I see suicide as solving that particular problem.
True, with vaccines and such, though I happened to remember a few schools mentioned and one Chicago theater I was in that had a thing on the wall about his donation.
Often corporate taxes don't apply to capital gains. Lets say I bought a house 10 years ago for $150k. Today I sell it for $200k. I had capital gains of $50k, which I would have to report and be taxed on. That $50k has never encountered corporate taxes. Now, the other $150k, that gets alot more complicated...
Seriously I feel as though all these people saying "corporate taxes are already applied to capital gains!" have never actually done business taxes.
A perfect prediction on what will happen to this idea in congress.
If you think taxes would be undodgeable, you are severely misinformed about what a financial transaction is. The only reason people trade stocks is because they are easier to trade. Bond market is 10 times the size of the equity market. And yet most people who manage their own money have never bought or sold a non-treasury bond. You can enumerate all financial transactions in existence. You can define financial transactions through a completely qualitative description and then those who need to raise money would simply go through a different structure. And the more you restrict free flow of capital, the more money Wall Street will make. They make their money on structuring deals. As soon as raising money requires more structured deals, they'll get into that business. The only people who'll be screwed will be the individuals who do what you want them to do -- hold stocks long term. Because anytime trading becomes more difficult, it simply reduces the amount of money in that particular market place.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Well you made a point, there. But you still failed to defend your original description of "unintelligent".
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
If you buy a security, treasury bond or other instrument (and that includes things like the bits of paper that wall street guys buy and sell for oil, gold, wheat, iron ore and other commodities) and hold it for less than a week, you have to pay a big tax on any profit you earn on that security. Eliminates the high-frequency-trading and computer stuff and a lot of the day-to-day fluctuations in the market whilst keeping those who invest for the "long term" (including those who invest peoples retirement savings on their behalf) from having to pay anything extra. It means people arent buying and selling just because of external events that really dont make that much difference to the actual profit/revenue/stability/value of the company being traded.
Shut up, stupid.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
But apparently ignore the bit where Jesus told them to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"...
And in turn ignore the bits in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles about people ending up choosing the wrong Caesar and paying the price. Tea Partiers want a Caesar that won't take more than what he needs.
Funny how you will never, ever see that little fact in any article about Social Security: that Social Security is not only solvent, but it's taking in more money than it's paying.
As I understand it, people who think Social Security will become insolvent soon believe so for two reasons.
First, health care improvements have increased the life expectancy of the average 65-year-old. As retirees live longer, a larger percentage of people will collect, and the number of people paying in per person collecting will decrease.
Second, the post-World War II baby boom of 1946-1964. Right now Social Security is solvent because the baby boomers have been paying in. But as baby boomers shift en masse from paying in to collecting, the number of people paying in per person collecting will decrease.
Politics do not enter into science, or it's no longer science.
Where does fundamental science get its funding other than the political process?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At times I'm surprised how much insight Bill Gates has on economics. A tax such as this could completely replace a sales tax and shift the tax burden from the individual to companies, really this should be just one policy in a portfolio of legislative & financial changes that should be implemented to change the complete failure of top-down policies that have stalled the American economy.
The government should not be looking at new taxes, but rather replacing economically prohibitive taxes (Prohibitive to both consumption & production) with effective taxes that target the largely untaxed, unregulated practices that businesses engage in that skew the distribution of wealth and bring unnecessary risk to the economy.
A super profits tax on the banks earnings would make much more sense. These institutions are swimming in funds that have been obtained through devious and illegal methods (eg. the loaning out of credit that doesn't exist).
After the 2nd world war, many countries imposed a stamp tax on business transactions -- each cheque (check) had to have a three cent stamp affixed. This tax was used to pay down the war debt.
I suppose we could do the same with credit card and cheque payments with perhaps a nickel tax charged for every monthly statement, mailed or website based. Debit transactions would be spared since there are no statements.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Bump up the income caps and the problem is solved.
Yeah, but that would be "increasing revenue", and Tea Party Republicans don't want to do that.
It starts as a 0.5% tax, then 0.75%, then 0.99%, then 1.25%.... It is much better to reform the Money System so that there is not funny money to bet with. It is easy credit, generally speaking, that is causing the dislocation problems.
I recommend a "time" tax on all transactions. You must wait 72 hours before selling any stock. Granted that puts a big cramp in day traders, but it should stabilize the market quite a bit.