October 13, 2015
Actually, the NYT did not say that Bush wanted to raise taxes on small businesses and it would not say this because it is not true. If for some reason one of its reporters mistaken drafted a story saying that it was true, an editor undoubtedly would have insisted that they double-check their source to make sure they got it right. That would be good journalism.
On the other hand, the NYT apparently does not exercise the same care when it comes to reporting on tax proposals for Wall Street. This is why we got the Upshot article titled “solution without a problem.” The piece begins:
“If there’s one thing that the Democratic presidential candidates can agree on, it’s that high-frequency traders are a problem. Hillary Rodham Clinton has now followed Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley in calling for a tax on the traders who, they complain, use their high-speed computers and expensive data lines to pick the pockets of ordinary investors.
“The odd thing about all this concern is that most of the investors who are actually facing off against the high-frequency traders — often on behalf of retirement savers — don’t see this as anything like the most costly problem they are facing, even in the arcane realm of trading mechanics.”
While Clinton and O’Malley have talked about taxing high-speed trading, Sanders has been very clear that his intention is to tax trading in general. His argument is that the financial sector as a whole wastes too many resources in trading that has little or no economic value. He expects his tax to raise enough money to finance free college tuition at public universities, something that would clearly be impossible if he was just looking to impose the tax on high-speed trading.
The author of the piece, Nathanial Popper, surely could have discovered Sanders plan with a call to his campaign staff or a quick trip to the website (here and here). That would have been the responsible thing to do, but it might have made it more difficult to write an article telling us about a solution that lacked a problem.
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