© Light Brigading/cc/flickr
Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Progressive leaders have us thinking about
revolution. If a revolution is to take place, Americans - especially young Americans - need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and they need to get
angry. The following should help.
1. $1,000,000,000,000,000 in Sales. Not One Cent for Sales Tax
The trading volume on the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion.
On that quadrillion dollars of sales CME
imposes transfer fees, contract fees, brokerage fees, Globex fees, clearing fees, and contract surcharges, many of them on both the buyer's and seller's side. As a result, the company had a
profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation from 2008 to 2010, and it's gotten even
higher since then.
But not a penny in sales tax for the taxpayers who provide
publicly-funded infrastructure, technology, systems of law, and security to help them process
billions of financial transactions.
Comment: There you have it: $4 Trillion spent on killing and maiming many thousands of people, destroying the infrastructure of whole countries, inspiring the wrath of the most extreme elements those (and other) countries, and destabilizing whole regions of our planet as a result. If you were at the highest echelon of the US government, or in a position to influence the lives of many millions of individuals, how would you spend $4 Trillion??