After President Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act last week, Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif.) advanced the theme of financial (and moral) responsibility by introducing the Investing in Our Future Act (H.R. 5783). This smart new legislation would place a tiny levy on an untaxed financial market most Americans don't even think about -- the foreign currency exchange market, where one currency is exchanged for another. This small fee has the potential to raise urgently needed funds for climate change and health programs in impoverished countries.
The financial crisis has pushed millions around the world deeper into poverty and forced already strapped countries to further cut budgets for environmental and health programs. Yet Wall Street continues to reap massive profits and pay its executives exorbitant bonuses.
The Investing in Our Future Act would tap very lightly into Wall Street's exploding coffers of wealth by placing a micro-tax of only 0.005 percent on currency transactions by large-scale investors in the U.S. The bill exempts transactions under $10,000, so it would have very little impact on small-scale traders, middle class investors, and travelers.
Although it's a drop in the behemoth bucket of Wall Street's profits, this minuscule levy could generate billions to solve some of the most pressing global crises! And, as an added bonus, this tiny tax would help curb speculation, which happens when Wall Street profiteers bet on infinitely small differences in currency costs to earn quick cash -- a risky game that fuels instability in financial markets to the detriment of society.
As a top climate polluter and the planet's largest economy, the U.S. owes the world a huge debt when it comes to climate change. The Investing in Our Future Act would begin to steer the United States on the right path toward living up to our responsibilities. Forty percent of the revenues generated would go toward United Nations climate funding to help developing countries deal with climate impacts that they did not cause, such as increasingly severe droughts, floods, crop losses and water shortages. This fund would also assist developing countries grow their economies sustainably with clean technology solutions. The rest would help provide critical public goods -- 40 percent for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other international health initiatives and 20 percent for affordable childcare for working parents in the U.S.
Before the House of Representatives recesses for August at the end of this week, I invite you to ask your members in Congress to co-sponsor this important piece of legislation. You can join Friends of the Earth by taking action here.
Follow Erich Pica on Twitter: www.twitter.com/foe_us
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I enjoyed reading your article however there are a few points I would like to point out.
1) Every time we tax an industry or product or service, we are adding to the cost of it in our country and making it more expensive relative to competing nations. In the case of taxing currency exchange this is particularly problematic since money is quite liquid and will move to those places where it gets the biggest bang for its buck. If for example, you tax that industry in America, it will move overseas and take the job creation aspect of the industry with it overseas: in effect moving another high-skill non-polluting industry overseas, say to China where they generally give preferential tax rates to companies there to attract that industry. In effect transactions go down in the US and we lose.
2) Taxing one industry to subsidize another, environment etc, unfairly penalizes one industry that is competitive for another industry that is not. Those industries need to learn to be competitive in their own right.
Kai
Your comments make no sense, and wither in the face of actual experience and facts here in America, planet Earth.
We have only tow options:
Claw back the trillions,
Print money to inflate the rich back down to our level.
Save money, cut the deficit, employ everyone, cut energy dependence:
Immediately order energy retrofits for all gov buildings.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
It appears we may be facing an unrecognized emergency. Confronting it may be required for survival. The necessary actions could produce many jobs and stimulate the economy.
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger us all. We are approaching 390 ppm and adding 2 ppm each year. The safe limit is 350 ppm.
According to one scientist, a very thin oil film on the surface of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans that could spread from the Gulf, threatens to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
A monumental effort on a wartime scale may very well prove necessary.
If the threat is real, renewable energy systems that can be deployed in time should rapidly be produced on a 24/7 basis. The White House, Congress and anyone concerned should check the facts without delay - and if confirmed, do whatever is necessary to make that possible.
See A 5 Point Emergency Program at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede fossil fuels much more rapidly than conventional wisdom suggests might be readily understood or easily believed.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
If the threat proves genuine, the immediate need is for the White House to urgently request and initiate whatever emergency actions are necessary to avoid a catastrophic loss of life.