Portside

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Biden’s investment plan addresses longstanding needs in the country. We will likely have to reduce other spending in the economy to make room for it. A financial transactions tax is a great place to look for some of the offset.

Congress should immediately pass the Wall Street Tax Act,(A Financial Transaction Tax - FTT), which would tax the sort of high-speed trading that has turned the financial sector into a casino at the expense of our communities.

People in the U.S. and around the world are being rapidly divided into two classes, the well-to-do and the lower-income majority. This severing of society will change only when progressive thinkers (and doers) agree on a single, manageable solution that will stop the easy flow of wealth to the privileged few.

“As someone studying the economics of this, I can say that a financial transactions tax is a policy no-brainer,” Lynn Stout, a professor of corporate law at Cornell Law School, said at a Wednesday briefing on Capitol Hill. “It’s all upside, there’s virtually no downside, and it’s astonishing we don’t have one.”

Chicago-area trading alone would pay the entire federal education bill.