EJ,
1. Why do you want to make Australians poorer, and Australian businesses less competitive, by denying them the ability to buy cheap Chinese goods? And why do you want to make people in 3rd world countries even poorer by denying them the ability to work in manufacturing products for export to Australia?

2. There's really no point in overcomplicating our tax system. Instead it's better to simplify it: income from capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as other income.

But be warned: not a single social house would be built by increasing the tax on private rental properties. And there are long waits for British council housing, as most of the houses were sold off in the 1980s.

3. The Tobin tax would be an extra cost on Australians. Businesses would easily dodge it by doing their currency trading overseas. And the banks don't currently impose their delays to enable a cash pool for playing the currency markets. They do it because they can, and because it's profitable. A Tobin tax wouldn't prevent that from being profitable. Like most of the benefits of a Tobin tax, it's completely illusory.

EJ,

1. If you think the Chinese wouldn't retaliate you are delusional. They would not need the same reason. P.S. raising tariffs to protect business turned the 1929 crash into a depression.

2. That Social housing costs a fortune is why Britain is forced to move away from it.

3. People can trade Aus dollars in NY or London. Good reason to move your money off shore.

Aidan, Capital gains is taxed at the same rate as company tax, for good reasons.

Re Aidan

Make-up tariffs (also called exploitation-indexed tariffs) are an incentive to ASEAN slave owners (often non-ASEAN investors exploiting crap conditions in slave countries) to improve their employees' wages and conditions to reduce the Make-up tariffs against their products.

Cheap consumer goods does Australians far less harm than importation of the mass impoverishment that is accompanying the cheap goods by exporting jobs. And there is also the moral issue (irrelevant I know to neoliberal econowonks) of Australian consumers exploiting foreign slavery.

Yes the Thatcherite asset sales crippled social housing. Opposing the plunder of public assets is part and parcel of working for the reverse process of building them up.

If the banks are imposing delays in completing transfers "because it's profitable" how does it profit them if using our money to play the currency markets isn't what is profitable?

A Tobin tax is a 1% in the dollar tax on all conversions made in Australia of Australian into foreign currency.

Taxing spiv income at a higher rate than wealth-creators' income worked fine during the war. It was phased out after the war not because of complexity but because the wartime pressure was gone and the spivs used the usual path of buying political parties to get rid of it.

Neoliberals may well try to keep their fingers in their ears to remain deaf to the messages that American and British voters have been sending them but the behind-the-scenes permanent governments will stir up an even harsher response if they try to circumvent what the millions of victims of their policies are telling them.

The sorts of responses I've advocated are very mild in comparison.

Shadow,
Much of Britain's council housing was sold off at a huge discount, and the councils were prevented from investing in more.

And what could possibly be a good reason for treating income from capital gains differently from other income?

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EJ,

You are making false accusations of slavery in order to justify discriminatory policies.
LOW WAGES ARE NOT SLAVERY!
And by denying people the opportunity to work for low wages, you're effectively forcing them to work for even lower wages.

Do you really think that it's a good idea to have Australians doing work of such low value that the only way to pay them is to force Aussies to pay more for the kind of things they make?

Are you still unaware that monetary and fiscal policy can always be set to create as much employment here as we want?

"how does it profit [banks] if using our money to play the currency markets isn't what is profitable?"
Everything they do with the money is likely to be profitable, but the point of their delays is that it means they still have the money but don't have to pay us interest on it.

Tobin taxes are always a bad idea. And the one your proposing would just ensure that the transactions that currently occur in Australia would instead occur overseas.

EJ,

Slavery! what racist bollocks. The point of these make up tariffs is not to benefit the low wage workers in poor nations, but to protect the highly paid workers in rich countries. The consequences would mean that the poorest would get poorer and those in rich countries would find the price of goods would increase and their standard of living would drop, especially when they face a boycott from the poor countries of their exports.

Next you want a Torbin tax that will raise bugger all.

Aidan,

Dividend and capital gains tax was set at 30%, as this was roughly the average rate paid by people, and as capital gains is paid by people of various means, it was a simple way to make it manageable and fair.

P.S. if you add capital gains to revenue, then any argument against negative gearing disappears.

Shadow,
A simple way to make it manageable and fair?? That's complete rubbish; it's just a tax break for the rich!

Having capital gains income taxed differently from other income needlessly complicates things. And as capital gains is paid by people of various means, it is unfair to have everyone pay it at the same rate when they're paying different rates from the rest of their tax.

P.S. if you add capital gains to revenue, then the biggest argument against negative gearing disappears; there are others, but nowhere near as compelling.