[MariconesUnited]

Originally Posted by Beingist

Well, "providing value" is a term that you and others use. To me, the phrase "offering what people want" is better defined by the term, "sales" or "selling." But, that's me.

Anyway, how else one can make a profit, without offering anything to the general public, is by buying (at a low price) and selling stocks (at a high price). This is the very nature of the question originally posed--how stock trading benefits society.

But, as you suggest in the rest of your post, Pete's done about the best at answering the question as anyone can. I still think stock trading is driven by profit motive, moreso, even, than business transactions, as it must look deeply in order to understand how it benefits society, and therefore, in essence, I still see such transactions of no inherent value, in and of themselves. It's still just another way to make money.

Been following your back and forth with Aelle. It seems to me that you have a problem with the profit motive itself. I've struggled with the concept myself. I think we need to remember that the profit motive isn't inherently exclusive to providing value to society. In fact they often go hand-in-hand. Just because the intention is to maximize profit does not mean that one is not providing value to society.

Originally Posted by Beingist

That said, I can see how traders would instantly jump on the seemingly inherent unfairness to taxing financial transactions. I think a straight comparison would be a national sales tax, which would tax product transactions, and since there is yet such a national tax, it makes the Tobin tax even more unfair. Not that I'm against a national sales tax, but there's no way I could support that, as long as there's already an income tax (and a progressive one, at that).

At first I didn't get what you were saying here. But then I realized over here (Canada) we have a national sales tax. You guys don't. And yet, I still don't understand how taxing financial transactions would be unfair. There's some sort of tax on products everywhere in the US no? They go to each individual State I presume? This would mean that everyone pays taxes on transactions. Except traders. Which would mean the current situation is unfair.