Nope, the majority of people who have ever been alive are alive right now. Horseshit. Standard estimate for total number of humans who've ever lived is about 100 billion.

Remember, that's regardless of shares transferred or their total value - selling 10,000 shares of Google's $500 stock (total value: $5M) would still get only a one-cent tax.

Nobody just sells 10,000 shares in a single bunch. That'd move the market against you. Instead, large orders are broken up and parcelled out in chunks. Your proposed rule would impose far larger costs on pension funds and mutual funds -- who invented algorithmic trading specifically for this purposes -- than the high frequency market makers do.

Maybe you should learn something about the structure of modern markets -- in particular, about the relative size and importance of the participants -- before you break the whole system to punish the minority who offend you?

Downhill Battle" could be Sony, or Janet Jackson's manager, or the Thing Formerly Known As An Interesting Artist From Minneapolis. They aren't. I went to high school and college with some of these folks. They're honest.