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I would be fine with taxing first generation capital gains at zero.
At the end of the day, I think the best tax approach would be a relatively low, flat tax on any and all income and gains, with a standard deduction amounting to something like 75 percent of the median taxpayer’s income from the prior year. I wouldn’t even have an issue making part of the deduction refundable to alleviate poverty and encourage tax filing.
I don’t think taxing unrealized gains is a good idea, but would absolutely treat a loan against highly appreciated assets as income. Yes, that includes your home equity loan. If somebody will lend you money against it, then it has tangible value and you are creating synthetic liquidity.
You can add the tax to your cost basis when you cash out.
The problem with our tax system is too many people get rich helping others navigating it. A legion of accountants and investment advisors would be out of work if a simple tax mechanism were put in place.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)It’s stupid to tax paper gains on founder’s shares. There’s no quicker way to stop new company formation.
The unrealized gains tax is a dicey proposition. On one hand you have founders getting crushed. On the other you have wealthy people using capital markets to borrow against inflated assets to avoid realizing gains. To me, that’s income.
Maybe fix the income problem by taxing gains on shares used as personal collateral and you won’t have to stick it to founders.
GR always had interesting takes on the wealth tax. I was intrigued by piketty’s take on it as an alternative to war and major economic dislocations Piketty’s thesis was that capital always outgrows economies, and always ends in massive misallocation of capital.
I think the adage that we get less of things we tax comes into play here. We should tax idle and generational wealth, and subsidize founders and hard work.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Every time I have rejected measure DD I have regretted it. Some good memories start with a size D.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I see what you did there.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)This is how the New York Times is reporting it at this moment: Nothing to see here, the votes just haven’t been counted yet. Millions of them.
I can’t paste the photo will do later.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I didn’t know about the IRS story. That’s crazy.
the same thing would happen if ID we’re to be checked across all states. Then it would be called vote suppression and Jim Crow 2.5 and such.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Most of my scenario looks moot because the popular vote is going to trump too. Who woulda thought?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I wish you peace. Your post is historically pretty interesting (the beer test, for instance). I kinda miss the old CEB or else I wouldn’t have set this one up.
Your post also sounds a bit more unhinged than I would have expected. Trump can’t stop the sun from rising. He hasn’t hypnotized the populace. He’s just a better option than a leftist to many Americans. In other words, if the Democrats weren’t so cynical, they would have nominated a sure winner (I’d still vote for an Amy Klobuchar over Trump). But to do that would have required the release of a lot of ideology.
Trump has exposed the same evil tendencies that the Dems and GOP have banked on for years. He has just done it in an open and brash way. When Biden calls Trump supporters garbage in a civil tone, it’s appealing to the same prejudices that Trump does when he says Illegal immigrants are criminals.
In other words, demagoguery has become the way to win. People act on anger, not love, so you have to appeal to their prejudices. Obama did it, Trump does it, Biden did it (not well), and Kamala is doing the same.
The really odd thing is Trump’s politics are centrist. If it weren’t for Trump the man, and the democrats successfully pinning people’s votes to their personal endorsement of the man, his politics would win by a mile. He’s proposing exactly zero social engineering legislation in his platform, and in reality is mainly focused on what would have been called law and order before that was made a buzzword for racial hate.
secure the border, keep us out of foreign wars, support businesses. He’s ridiculously pro American but perhaps blind to what his rhetoric has done to the other side. They have grown into angry, violent people because his rhetoric pins them in a corner.
finally, even your post above falls for one of the worst fallacies to emerge in this election: the fallacy that the Dems know exactly what Trump will do, and will tell you, and can’t articulate a damned thing about what they would do. Trump’s gonna…. It’s pure fear mongering, coming from the party that has restrained, restricted, enslaved, interred, and segregated more people than the other over its history. Trumps gonna.
I wish you peace. Your post sounds deeply agitated. Get some fresh air, watch the election returns, and realize this too shall pass.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)It’s as plausible a scenario as someone saying Trump will win the election, and Kamala will choose not to allow the electors to convene.
I started a thread below for predictions. You should play.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I still think Trump wins, but am getting a distinctly “red wave” feeling. I think in my little ideological corner of the internet where x and Facebook pushes me, Trump should win in a landslide.
when I step away from that, which I do frequently (for example I maintain a NYT subscription, don’t ask me why), it seems equally or more plausible that Kamala could win. I really don’t like her as a president. She’s awful. But she could win because…
…Trump doesn’t know how to shut up, never mind when. He’s truly terrible down the stretch. I caught him on Fox and friends this morning and he was all over the place. I wish he could just shut up but that’s him. I would love to meet the guy and have a dinner with him. I would enjoy it, I bet, but man I don’t like him as a politician.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I saw this on twitter when it happened. How is it even possibly explainable?
They should be investigated for election interference if you ask me.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I think John Kelly is probably an otherwise honorable man who really couldn’t deal with failing.
I also think that people overestimate the honor of general officers. They are sometimes as much politicians as military leaders.
Do I believe a guy like Trump could say, in a private conversation, that some people who died in combat got suckered into it? Absolutely. It’s almost on brand. Do I think that means he hates the military? Of course not.
Trump is as American as they come. I wish we would just admit it. I can guarantee you plenty of people in America have sat around the campfire saying “hell naw I am not the guy that’s gonna charge that machine gun nest! I wouldn’t want to be the loser with the short straw on that one! That suckers gonna get blown up!”
See what I did?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I’m starting to get a “red wave” feeling and we all know how that turned out in 2022.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)I used to be a silver fan, and after reading this can only think “fuck that guy.”
it reads like “we are great but the world is against us.” Very typical.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Yeah. The Trump McDonalds photo op illustrates all that is crazy about politics. The left is apoplectic that it was an orchestrated photo op, and wants me to believe that Biden’s presidency hasn’t been stage managed LIKE A PHOTO OP since day one.
Remember the Easter bunny directing Biden away from reporters?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)
