BrianGarst.com

We need to “pitch in” more:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea of a “global” tax on stock trades and other financial transactions, saying the estimated $150 billion in annual revenue from such a tax could be used to help fund more stimulus spending.

At her weekly press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi said the financial transactions tax (HR4191) currently before Congress would have to be made “global” to keep U.S. investors from taking their business overseas and out of taxable reach.

…Pelosi said she thought the idea might have currency among a public eager to see Wall Street firms “pitching in” to help the government grow the economy.

“I think there would be a market for it among the American people to say that we are all participating in the economic prosperity of our country, and we are all pitching in to continue that prosperity,” said Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi’s view of society and the economy is gloriously and unabashedly foolish.

Let me get this straight: we need to tax productive financial transactions and give that money to a cadre of bureaucrats and politicos, who will then waste it various and sundry ways, in order to be prosperous.  No.

Taxes are not how we contribute to prosperity.  We contribute to prosperity by producing, and taxes are a burden on production.  Nancy Pelosi has it exactly backwards.

economic theory Nancy Pelosi