Making Prosperity Happen

IF YOU MAKE a hundred dollars digging ditches in America, you pay a higher income tax than if you make the same money investing in the stock market, and that just don't seem right - to anyone. Bernie Sanders, who makes Hillary Clinton look conservative and capitalistic, proposes a transaction fee on all stock purchases. With this new tax revenue Sanders would pay for free college, or at least some of it. Throw in a modest yet reasonable increase in the capital gains tax, and Wall Street finally begins to pay the American people back, belatedly. Such a tax would slow down the frenetic day traders with their super fast computers, and possibly smooth out some of the volatility which has plagued the markets of late, without slowing down the market unreasonably or bringing capitalism and the American way to a halt. Great Britain already has a transaction tax, and the rest of Europe will soon. Since most American wealth, or much of it, is safely hidden beyond our borders to avoid contributing taxes to the rest of us, perhaps the owners of this wealth should be vigorously encouraged to bring it back home - or go join it. No residency without taxation, something like that. In our modern American economy we need more than billionaires providing "financial services" for the purpose of becoming multi-billionaires. We need more than a vast army of accountants, attorneys, and stockbrokers quibbling over and clipping coins. We need production of real, tangible material wealth. How about some food, clothing, and shelter? Throw in some infrastructure and education, and we're on our way to economic health. If we could manufacture some real prosperity in america, if only as a mild diversion from our paper shuffling and litigating, we might even eventually become as prosperous and wealthy as all those socialistic European countries we seem so determined, strangely, to avoid emulating.