The government is the one who should care most because people who hold stocks for 5-10 years do not contribute much to the tax revenue.
The Swedish government did that directly on brokers. Taiwanese and Indian government do that on brokers as well.
Any endeavor that is profitable and pays taxes on profits should be qualified as a meaningful economic activity.
Have you all tried to contact your reps in Washington? I have emailed mine, including Sen. Schumer. I did so in the winter/spring 2009 when this tax was first mentioned. Got replies, that basically said, "thanks, we'll consider your side of the story"... Emailed Sen. Schumer again sometime in early Sept.-09, got a reply, again, from Sen. Schumer that again stated that he was against a tax on financial transactions/trades. That being said, the Wall Street firms have the power to stop this for themselves and for all of us. I do believe we should email/fax/call our reps, as such a tax would surely kill the avarage day-trader making a little on the side... Unemployment in the financial industry would skyrocket if such a tax was enacted, volume would dry up, and lots of the bigger players would go overseas to get away from this tax. See Sweden's tax as the example. I don't mind paying higher taxes, but let us ALL pay higher taxes, or maybe lower spending...Nahhh, that's to difficult, mid-terms coming up and all http://www.rallycongress.com/no2tradertax/1536/tell-congres-to-block-trader-tax/
I'm glad to hear about Schumer. If people have a chance, try calling them instead of e-mailing them. I have been told it has a bigger impact.
By the way, if Sen. Schumer is indeed against this, then it will not be adopted as long as all of the Republicans in the senate stay united in their opposition to it. Thanks to Schumer they would have enough votes to filibuster it.