The Tobin Tax

Discussion of the Tobin tax gets little discussion in U.S. pop media because, first of all, pop media outlets are controlled by a consolidated capital which proponents of the tax argue needs to be controlled.

The tax has a progressive, proportional quality because it is targeted at high finance. However, the tax also has a regressive quality because many income classes do engage in the transactions the Tobin levy proposes to tax in order to control the perils of speculative demand (the classic peril of causing liquidity crises and a deflationary trend that consolidates the capital and benefits the primary "class" of the tax's target--those who largely own the capital and apply the peril/benefit).

The tax will not solve the cause of the problem. The income necessary to demand the markets remains consolidated to command it. It is just another Keynesian-like symptomatic treatment. The revenue will be used to fund the welfare state, empowering the bureaucratic model and the elitist technocrats that run it for the power elite in the name of democracy.

The income policy necessary to actually solve the problem of algorythmic, recurrent liquidity crisis is a purely progressive tax: the higher the income, whatever the source, the higher the tax. The retributed revenue puts the "demand" back in the market quickly and easily, defeating the classic benefit of the deflationary trend to keep the capital, and power, consolidated.

The Tobin tax will be falsely sold as a progressive tax measure to falsely satisfy the need, the demand, for that measure. The tax is only "progressive" because it conforms to policies and programs of the progressive era of politics.

The progressive era represents the emergence of a new middle class of elits that aspire to the ruling class, legislating all manner of limits to liberty and raising huge tax revenues that supports their sense of an upper-class status. This cohort largely disguises themselves as "liberals."

The liberal description of progressivism is false. It is an endeavor to tyrannize society with the always-better-judgement of elite authority. It is a tendency that is inimical to a free and civil society and gives credence to the consolidation of wealth and power. It is the problem, not the solution.