The thing to understand is that HFT is a forced, private tax by the parasites against the real economy. By imposing a 1% tax on transactions legitimate business would be benefited as the HFT wouldn't be allowed to occur. And if the HFT moved into the shadow banking system who would they be sucking off of? They can't simply all suck off each other as HFT is reliant upon the real economy to provide its 'host capital'. A shadow trading exchange without a Tobin Tax (after it was implemented) would be so filled with HFT that no legitimate trader would touch it.
I understand this 100%, but how are you figuring that a laughably small 1% tax (I'm assuming that'd be 2% round trip) is going to curb HFT? 2% knocked off of tens of billions of dollars still leaves them with tens of billions of dollars. That's like shooting a firecracker at an aircraft carrier and expecting it to sink.
Yes, it'll most certainly pay for itself and generate revenue, there's no doubt about that. I just don't see how it's going to even put a dent in HFT. If we're really going to make an honest effort to stop HFT, rather than just share a tiny portion of the profits with the public, then let's try a little harder. Why affect an across the board transaction tax at a fixed 1% when we could have no transaction tax for securties/currency held for more than say, one day, maybe a 2% round trip tax on securties held less than one day, a 5% tax on securities held less than one hour, and some very high, say 50%, on transactions that round trip in under 10 seconds. These taxes could be round-trip fees and charged on the completion of the trade, just to keep things simple.
IMO, that would eliminate HFT or sharply curb it. Due to this, it would probably generate less revenue than the Tobin Tax, but I don't think this should be about revenue, I think it should be about eliminating HFT.
They are using HFT to garner a tiny fraction of a percent of profit on the trade. Each trade in a hyper-trading trade, yields a miniscule fraction of a percent in profit, point being much less than 1% that the tax would take on each transaction. If you are going to make a trade that would yield you a 0.0034% profit and you're going to have to pay a 1% tax on that transaction it becomes obvious that only people making long term investments would be trading, which is what we want (if we want a functioning, productive economy).