Unstoppable by Ralph Nader Page A

Santorum and, until 2012, GovernorMitt Romney. With the outraged reactions that will be voiced when, for example, the full personal stories of what it is like for Mom and Dad to try to make it on $7.25 to $10.50 per hour when the bosses, like the CEOs of Walmart and Target, are making $11,000 or more per hour, reach the mass media, who has to worry about the claims of well-rewarded, armchair columnists?
    5. Enact taxation reform, and gather uncollected taxes.
    Taxation appears to be one of the more divisive issues among conservatives and liberals. Hardly a press opportunity goes by without no-tax, conservative (his description) House Speaker John Boehner decrying “all of the over-taxing, over-regulating, and over-spending that’s going on in Washington.” 6 Now switch to David Stockman, another Reagan conservative and former head of the White House’s budget office in the early eighties. Retired after a long investment banking career, Stockman recently condemned the “simplistic and reckless idea that the way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes anytime, anywhere, for any reason [which has] become embedded [in the GOP]. It has become a religion, it has become a catechism. It’s become a mindless incantation.” 7
    In fact, total income taxes paid by corporations or individuals as a percent of income and GDP in the United States is at the lowest level in decades. 8 That is a major reason why government deficits are expanding. Having less and less revenue to meet the spending levels of government, including its unpaid-for wars, results in trillion-dollar-plus deficits a year. Stockman says this plunge into red ink started with George W. Bush, who put forward massive increases in defense spending and large reductions in the revenue base while not making any effort at cutting spending of the corporate state.
    What is Stockman’s favorite tax? It would be one levied on financial transactions—in effect a sales tax on Wall Street speculation—one that could raise big money daily. Showing that one can neverstereotype conservatives, even ones like Stockman, who would cut all kinds of federal social service and boondoggle military programs, he describes Wall Street in these words: “We have a massive casino that is doing nothing but churning transactions by the millisecond, robots trading with each other, as a result of the Federal Reserve juicing the system continuously with overnight money that’s free. There’s no productive value for Main Street or the real U.S. economy.” 9
    A speculation tax on the hundreds of trillions of dollars annually spent chasing derivatives would not have to be more than one-half of 1 percent to raise $300 billion a year. The European Commission proposed such a tax as well. Eleven European countries already have some lesser form of transaction tax. 10
    Such a tax is an easy sell to shoppers, who have to pay a 6 to 8 percent (or more) retail sales tax in stores when they buy the necessities of life. LR shoppers is where the convergence can start, but to get off the ground it would need some high-profile political leadership and media reporting and commentary. I’ve often joked that we won’t get such a financial transaction tax, one championed, by the way, by many an organized nurses’ rally, unless leading financial columnists for the New York Times , Floyd Norris and Gretchen Morgenson, get on the issue.
    But I think it is more promising to start a dialogue outside the box of this LR wrangling over the tax rates for income, capital gains, and dividends (I believe they should all be taxed at the same rate). Thinking outside the box, we might consider proposing that before taxes on work or labor, there should be taxation of what society likes the least or dislikes the most, so as to diminish these activities. For example, tax carbon pollution, a policy favored by Exxon/Mobil, several leading Republicans, liberal and conservative