Want to erase U.S. debt and still fund new, effective programs? Then tax the Taiwan way. I recently witnessed firsthand Taiwan’s thriving economy. Besides capital gains tax, each Taiwan stock trade is assessed a 0.3 percent transaction tax and the top income bracket is taxed at 45 percent, versus our 39.6 percent that Republicans strive to reduce.
Transaction tax may be the fairest mode of taxation since it is assessed on those sufficiently wealthy to trade stocks for “unearned income” — income from no productive work. But even Oregon Democratic U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio’s proposed much smaller 0.03 percent transaction tax is opposed by Republicans.
This equitable Taiwan taxation system doesn’t affect their work ethic. My son, who has worked in over 40 countries worldwide, describes Taiwanese as the hardest working. Interestingly, Taiwan also enjoys single-payer health care modeled after Canada’s.
In addition to debt reduction, transaction tax revenues could be used in a myriad of ways involving living-wage jobs. One urgent need for such jobs is to repair our country’s aging and deteriorating infrastructure, as frequently proposed by President Obama. But again, that faces staunch opposition from Republicans.
