A Robin Hood Tax Would Be A Major Initiative Of The Bernie Sanders Administration

Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Finland all provide free college educations for qualified students. That's socially very healthy and encourages an egalitarian society. Free college education for all Americans shouldn't be looked at as a unicorn and, in fact, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate this morning that would do just that-- and more. A companion bill, H.R.1464, by Keith Ellison was promptly bottled up in the House Ways and Means Committee by committee chair Paul Ryan.

Sanders wants to use a Robin Hood tax to finance free college in public universities and to rebuild and heal the country. His two bills also provide for investments in universal healthcare, affordable housing, eradicating HIV/AIDS and fighting poverty and climate change.

The legislation introduced by Sanders and Ellison calls for a 50-cent transaction tax on every $100 of trades on stock sales and lesser amounts on transactions involving bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments. Passage would mean the U.S. has joined dozens of other nations-- including every other major global financial market, including the U.K. and the E.U.-- in a growing system of financial transaction taxes.

Keith Ellison explained to Minneapolis voters what he's trying to accomplish. "America’s working families need their country to invest in them again. The money raised from a wafer-thin tax on Wall Street’s high frequency trades could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our families, protect our environment and increase opportunity for all Americans. If the United States joins the dozens of other nations already benefitting from a financial transaction tax, we can create millions of jobs, while also reducing dangerous market volatility."

Are you with Robin and Tuck or with the Sheriff of Nottingham? If we want a Robin Hood tax, we have to elect people like Bernie Sanders, not like Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton.