...It would apply a tax of 0.1 percent on each stock trade and 0.01 percent on trades of derivatives like options, futures, and credit default swaps. The European Commission estimated that this rate structure would generate an amount of revenue equal to 0.4-0.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, this would be between $70 billion and $90 billion a year.
The best thing about this story is that almost all of the revenue would come from the financial industry....
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To be clear, this is not a story of shutting down the financial industry. The financial industry plays a central role in sustaining a healthy economy. It provides the money families need to buy a home or start a business. It also provides businesses with the capital they need to expand. But the financial sector has grown way beyond the size necessary to fill these purposes, with the core financial sector (investment banking and securities and commodities trading) expanding five-fold as a share of the economy since the 1970s.