A TAXING IDEA

While we are agonizing over a means of generating funding for public healthcare, retooling industrial America, modernizing education, clean energy infrastructure projects and Federal bailouts, it is worth pondering the following quote from an editorial written by Ralph Nader earlier this year:

"Ask why they didn't require speculators to fund their own bailout while you, the taxpayer, pay 5-10 percent sales tax for necessities. Speculators buy $500 trillion of securities derivatives each year and don't pay one penny. A mere 1/10 of 1 percent sales tax on purchases of these derivatives would raise $500 billion per year to pay for their bailout. Let the speculators fund their own bailout."