http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19980
The article is written mainly about the American situation, where vat is proposed to come in, but refers to the EU and raises awareness of the relative success of North Dakota, the high profits and low taxes paid by financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and the realistic proposal of taxing the financial markets at point of sale.
ONQ.
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States, of course, don’t even have their own state-owned banks, with one exception -- North Dakota . North Dakota is also the only state now sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment and mortgage delinquency rates in the country. As von Drehle observes, “It’s a swell time to be North Dakota .”
But most states are dealing with serious, chronic defaults, putting them in the same debt trap as Greece : they are being forced to lay off workers, sell public assets, and look for ways to squeeze more taxes out of an already over-taxed populace. And their situation is slated to get worse, since the federal government’s stimulus package will soon be cut, along with assistance to the states.
Instead of “reflating” the collapsed economy, however, national governments are insisting on “fiscal responsibility;” and the responsibility is all being put on the states and the laboring and producing classes. The financial speculators who caused the debacle are largely getting off scot free. They not only pay no tax on the purchase and sale of their “financial products,” but they pay very little in the way of income taxes. Goldman Sachs paid an effective income tax rate of only 1% in 2008. Prof. Hossein-Zadehi writes:
While Congress caters to the banks, the states have been left to fend for themselves. Where is the money to come from to pull off the impossible feat of balancing their budgets? Bleeding a VAT tax out of an already-anemic working class is more likely to kill the patient than to alleviate the disease. “Unlike EU countries, where the VAT is the largest single source of tax revenue,” notes Professor Randall G. Holcombe in a recent study, “the states of the United States already tax the VAT tax base with their sales taxes.” This doubling down on the same base would not only reduce the amount of money states are able to raise, but it would seriously hinder VAT’s role as a money generator. By 2030, says Prof. Holcombe, this effect would have offset any increase in government revenue from the VAT.
A more viable and more equitable solution would be to tap into the only major market left on the planet that is not now subject to a sales tax – the “financial products” that are the stock in trade of the robust financial sector itself. A financial transaction tax on speculative trading is sometimes called a “Tobin tax,” after the man who first proposed it, Nobel laureate economist James Tobin. The revenue potential of a Tobin tax is huge. The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that total annual derivatives trades were $1.14 quadrillion (a quadrillion is a thousand trillion). That figure was probably low, since over-the-counter trades are unreported and their magnitude is unknown. A mere 1% tax on $1 quadrillion in trades would generate $10 trillion annually in public funds. That is only for derivatives. There are also stocks, bonds and other financial trades to throw in the mix; and more than half of this trading occurs in the United States
The article is written mainly about the American situation, where vat is proposed to come in, but refers to the EU and raises awareness of the relative success of North Dakota, the high profits and low taxes paid by financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and the realistic proposal of taxing the financial markets at point of sale.
ONQ.
--------------------------------
States, of course, don’t even have their own state-owned banks, with one exception -- North Dakota . North Dakota is also the only state now sporting a budget surplus, and it has the lowest unemployment and mortgage delinquency rates in the country. As von Drehle observes, “It’s a swell time to be North Dakota .”
But most states are dealing with serious, chronic defaults, putting them in the same debt trap as Greece : they are being forced to lay off workers, sell public assets, and look for ways to squeeze more taxes out of an already over-taxed populace. And their situation is slated to get worse, since the federal government’s stimulus package will soon be cut, along with assistance to the states.
Instead of “reflating” the collapsed economy, however, national governments are insisting on “fiscal responsibility;” and the responsibility is all being put on the states and the laboring and producing classes. The financial speculators who caused the debacle are largely getting off scot free. They not only pay no tax on the purchase and sale of their “financial products,” but they pay very little in the way of income taxes. Goldman Sachs paid an effective income tax rate of only 1% in 2008. Prof. Hossein-Zadehi writes:
“It is increasingly becoming clear that the working majority around the world face a common enemy: an unproductive financial oligarchy that, like parasites, sucks the economic blood out of the working people, simply by trading and/or betting on claims of ownership. . . . The real question is when the working people and other victims of the unjust debt burden will grasp the gravity of this challenge, and rise to the critical task of breaking free from the shackles of debt and depression.”
Working people don’t rise to the task because they have been propagandized into believing that “fiscal austerity” is something that needs to be done in order to save their children from an even worse fate. What actually needs to happen in a deflationary collapse is to spend more money into the system, not pull it back out by paying off the federal debt; but the money needs to go into the real economy – into factories, farms, businesses, housing, transportation, sustainable energy systems, health care, education. Instead, the stimulus money has been hijacked, diverted into cleaning up the toxic balance sheets of the financial gamblers who propelled the economy into its perilous dive.
While Congress caters to the banks, the states have been left to fend for themselves. Where is the money to come from to pull off the impossible feat of balancing their budgets? Bleeding a VAT tax out of an already-anemic working class is more likely to kill the patient than to alleviate the disease. “Unlike EU countries, where the VAT is the largest single source of tax revenue,” notes Professor Randall G. Holcombe in a recent study, “the states of the United States already tax the VAT tax base with their sales taxes.” This doubling down on the same base would not only reduce the amount of money states are able to raise, but it would seriously hinder VAT’s role as a money generator. By 2030, says Prof. Holcombe, this effect would have offset any increase in government revenue from the VAT.
A more viable and more equitable solution would be to tap into the only major market left on the planet that is not now subject to a sales tax – the “financial products” that are the stock in trade of the robust financial sector itself. A financial transaction tax on speculative trading is sometimes called a “Tobin tax,” after the man who first proposed it, Nobel laureate economist James Tobin. The revenue potential of a Tobin tax is huge. The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that total annual derivatives trades were $1.14 quadrillion (a quadrillion is a thousand trillion). That figure was probably low, since over-the-counter trades are unreported and their magnitude is unknown. A mere 1% tax on $1 quadrillion in trades would generate $10 trillion annually in public funds. That is only for derivatives. There are also stocks, bonds and other financial trades to throw in the mix; and more than half of this trading occurs in the United States