Heal America! Make Wall Street Pay! Event
The National Nurses Union (NNU) is holding a rally and lobby day this Thursday, December 3, in Washington, DC in support of a financial transactions tax. The event is co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO and other progressive organizations. Here in Pennsylvania, Health Care For America Now (HCAN) is working with the local NNU affiliate PASNAP, to bring people to the rally by bus.
The buses are FREE and will leave at 7:00 am from two locations, Temple University Hospital and 16th and JFK Boulevard. After a 11:30 rally, there will be a chance to do some lobbying on Capitol Hill and there may be a meeting with the staff of some of our members of Congress (or, if we can arrange it, the members themselves). The bus will leave Washington to return to Philly at 5:00 pm. Box meals will be provided in both directions.
The event is part of an international day of action. President Obama will be discussing the financial transactions tax at a meeting of the G-20 in France on November 3. Actions in support of the Financial Transactions Tax will be held all over the world.
To RSVP for the bus, go to http://hcanpa.org/nov3rally or contact me at MarcStier@stier.net or (215) 880-6142.
The Event and the Occupy Wall Street Movement
The OWS movement has been criticized for not having a clear set of “policy proposals” or “demands.” As I recently wrote, I think that this criticism is totally misguided. The fundamental goal of the movement is crystal clear: to reduce the power of the corporate rich over our lives and, by doing so, reduce inequality and create justice for working people and the middle class. And the aim of a movement like OWS is not so much to create some consensus on a list of public policies, but to raise our consciousness. We need this movement so that we can explain to ourselves how the domination of the corporate rich—the top 1%—over our political community—has come about, how it has led to a massive increase in income inequality, and how it stands in the way of opportunity and well-being for the other 99%. And we need this movement so that all of us who share this view, or have held it for years, can see how many of us there are. People with our views have always been the majority, but until we see ourselves as a powerful, motivated majority, we won’t take action to reclaim our democracy from those who have crippled it.
So, on my view, the OWS movement doesn’t need to embrace particular public policies to be effective. But there are some, like the financial transactions tax (FTT), that are so consistent with the views of OWS, that supporting it is an especially effective way of explaining what the movement is about. That doesn’t mean we all need to embrace the idea of FTT. But I would hope that some of us would do so.
The Financial Transactions Tax
The basic idea of the FTT is straightforward. Under an FTT, every time someone buys or sells a financial instrument (stock, bond, option to buy or sell something busy, credit default swap, etc.) the would pay a tax that equaled a small percentage of the value of that transaction. The most common proposal calls for a .5% tax on stock and other similar transactions, and a tax of .01 percent for each year to maturity on the sale of a bond or other similar financial instruments.
Why would such a tax be a good idea?
- Because the tax would fall almost entirely on people who hold wealth. And that means that the top 1%, because it holds so much of the wealth of our country, would pay far more than the next 10%. Because the tax would be initially set at a low rate, and housing transactions are excluded from it, the bottom 80% of the country would pay almost nothing.
- Because the tax would raise a large amount of money that could be used to create jobs, and guarantee health care and retirement security to working and middle class Americans. The amount raised would depend on how much the tax reduces trading in financial instruments. If that reduction were 50%, it would raise $176 billion per year. If, as is more likely given the low tax rate that has been proposed, that reduction were 25%, it would raise $265.3 billion per year.
- Because that tax would reduce short term trading in the finance markets and thus make them more stable. The tax would fall heaviest on those who buy and sell financial instruments frequently, many of whom are speculators whose actions create wild swings in the markets.
- Because it would reduce earnings in the finance industry, where firms and people are generally commissions for trading. This might encourage fewer well educated people from entering a field that is dramatically overpaid compared to the small contribution it makes to the well-being of our economy. It would also hold them accountable for the financial and economic disaster they have created.
- Because adoption of the FTT in American would encourage the European Community to adopt the tax as well. Adoption of the tax in the US, in other words, would stimulate a growing international movement to restrain the wealth and power of the finance industry and make it pay for rebuilding the global economy and restoring the middle class.
There aren’t too many other new public policies that could have so many good effects while sending the clear message that we, the 99%, intend to reclaim our right to create a political economy that works for us, not for the top 1%
To join us at this rally, please RSVP at http://hcanpa.org/nov3rally or contact me at MarcStier@stier.net or (215) 880-6142.