>A tax on financial transactions. This is sometimes called a "Tobin tax". The US financial services sector has doubled in size as a fraction of the economy. It's currently around 12%. That's an overhead cost, and a big one. Could be half that.
What reason is there to believe that this is an overhead cost?
As I mentioned in another comment, over the past ~10 years or so, US median earnings have grown remarkably fast compared with other large countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=0xDEAFBEAD Hard to argue with results.
Taxing financial transactions intuitively seems like the sort of thing which would put a drag on economic growth. And manufacturers need to transact just like any other sort of business; I don't see how taxing transactions encourages manufacturers relative to other firms.
I like the tax on advertising though. I would tweak it so the tax only kicks in once your spending on ads exceeds, say, $10 million per year. That way innovative new products can advertise to customers tax-free. This method also encourages big monopolies to spin-off individual product lines, which could reduce monopoly power.
What reason is there to believe that this is an overhead cost?
As I mentioned in another comment, over the past ~10 years or so, US median earnings have grown remarkably fast compared with other large countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=0xDEAFBEAD Hard to argue with results.
Taxing financial transactions intuitively seems like the sort of thing which would put a drag on economic growth. And manufacturers need to transact just like any other sort of business; I don't see how taxing transactions encourages manufacturers relative to other firms.
I like the tax on advertising though. I would tweak it so the tax only kicks in once your spending on ads exceeds, say, $10 million per year. That way innovative new products can advertise to customers tax-free. This method also encourages big monopolies to spin-off individual product lines, which could reduce monopoly power.