Originally published on Forbes.com Oct 4th, 2012
For those of you who don’t want to invest an hour in watching a tax geek interview Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein, I am having the interview broken down into bite sized chunks. I had two main goals in the interview. One was to get to know more about Dr. Stein. The other was to ask her about specific items in the Green Party platform that I found interesting. Most of the items were tax related, but a couple were not. This clip is about the Green Party’s proposal for a 50 basis point financial transaction tax.
As you see she did not say that the traders should go to work building windmills. That is merely my way of indicating how unconcerned she is about a transaction tax pushing trading overseas and devastating the economy of Manhattan and Chicago and probably some other places I am not thinking about.
Oddly enough, Dr. Stein’s sentiment that maybe less trading would be a good thing is in line with the sentiments of some of my border line Tea Party friends. When Occupy Wall Street brought the transaction tax up in the fall, that was one of the only things that the geriatric segment of my office was in sympathy with. I think they got most of their information on OWS from me. You probably will not be surprised that they rely on me for information about Dr. Stein and the Green Party.
I found Dr, Stein’s answer on the transaction tax one of the least satisfying pieces of the interview. I think there is something off about comparing it to a sales tax, which it is more of a tax on consumption. Also, with interest rates as low as they are, 50 basis points seems like an awful lot to pay to trade a bond.
If you would like to watch the entire interview, here it is.
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