Capital Gains Tax

Many people say that the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes and the tax burden is placed on the middle class and working class. Because tax is collected on the income tax. But, isn't there a capital gains tax too?

 

In theory. In practice, the super-duper uber-rich don't pay it. All they have to do is keep the asset until they die, then its cost basis is stepped up, so if an heir sells it, they don't have to pay any income tax of any kind. Such gains, of which >90% go to the rich, are not only not "double taxed," they are never taxed at all.

 

I just want to say that the intellectual discussion on this forum is often subpar. This thread is one example of it.

 

~ No different than most other threads ...

 

https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequa...qid=1649946510&sprefix=stiglitz,aps,97&sr=8-1

 

Care to provide a summary, or were you too lazy to do that?

 

I have literally done that about a hundred times in various forums, including here. I have only once had someone get back to me that they read it, speaking of lazy..

"In The Price of Inequality, Joseph E Stiglitz passionately describes how unrestrained power and rampant greed are writing an epitaph for the American dream. The promise of the US as the land of opportunity has been shattered by the modern pleonetic tyrants, who make up the 1%, while sections of the 99% across the globe are beginning to vent their rage.

Stiglitz details the profound consequences not just of the current financial meltdown but of the previous decades of neoliberal interventions on the incomes, health and prospects of the 99% and the damage done to the values of fairness, trust and civic responsibility.

For roughly 30 years after the second world war, the 1% had a steady share of the US cake. In the five years to 2007, however, the top 1% seized more than 65% of the gain in US national income. In 2010, their share was 93%. This did not create greater prosperity for all (myth number one). On the contrary, much of this gain was "rent seeking", not creating new wealth but taking it from others
The Price of Inequality is a powerful plea for the implementation of what Alexis de Tocqueville termed "self-interest properly understood". Stiglitz writes: "Paying attention to everyone else's self-interest – in other words to the common welfare – is in fact a precondition for one's own ultimate wellbeing… it isn't just good for the soul; it's good for business." Unfortunately, that's what those with hubris and pleonexia have never understood – and we are all paying the price. ."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/13/price-inequality-joseph-stiglitz-review

There are many other reviews on the net, it even has it's own Wikipedia page, if your fingers aren't broken. Your library can get you a copy, if you can lift a book.

I can tell you what I think of it, I bought a copy, I don't buy many books..

 

As the above is the third post in the thread, you would appear to have an objection to one of the two previous posts. As the second one was mine, and I simply identified the relevant indisputable facts, you must, by a process of elimination, have been referring to the first one. And I agree, its intellectual level was quite low.

 

Since the majority of residential property is owned by individual working and middle class people, it's rather absurd to suggest it's a rich person thing. PLENTY of ordinary people bequeath property .. and for many, that's the actual goal. To provide security in an increasingly uncertain future for those who aren't wealthy.

Do you have a problem with working and middle class people wanting to ensure their kids survive?

 

I agree with the author on the immense damage done by the Welfare State in recent decades. We've become an underclass via their clever exploitation of our mid-century hubris, and we couldn't wait to dismantle community & collective in favour of the 'every man for himself' model the WS favours. We gave away fairness, trust, and civic responsibility in favour of 'no obligations'. It's 'easier' to rent than to slave away for years saving a downpayment on your own home. It's 'easier' to dismantle community and become a ward of the State, because community means responsibility, answerability, conformity, participation, obligation, and cooperation (IOW, all the things we now despise). Etc etc etc .. ad nauseum.

 

Sorry, but that's a complete misread. He's talking about the parasitical rich, it's called rent seeking.

 

No it's not. Most is owned by corporations and the rich people who own corporations. And why are you trying to change the subject to residential property, the only significant asset class that is not almost all owned by the rich?

No, that's just another false claim from you, because the great majority of all assets do not consist of residential property, and almost all of all those assets are owned by the rich.

Then they are fools who are sacrificing their own children on the altar of the rich's greed, privilege and parasitism.

The main reason their future is uncertain is the evil system of privilege and parasitism they -- and you -- have so foolishly bought into. Do you really think the system of legalized theft is somehow of benefit to honest people? REALLY???

That depends entirely on how they do it. If they do it by productive labor, raising their kids to be good citizens, and fighting -- or even just voting -- for justice, then more power to them. OTOH, if they want to do it by making themselves the beneficiaries of injustice, by placing their pockets in the path of others' rightful wages, then yes, I do have a problem with that.

Do you think it is somehow not a problem if working and middle class people try to ensure their kids survive by buying them slaves? The only difference between owning a privilege (like a land title) and owning a slave is that when you own a slave, you own all of one person's rights to liberty, while when you own a privilege, you own one of all people's rights to liberty.

 

I have a lot of time for Stiglitz, but he just spent that whole video evading the issue. Not once did the words, "justice" or "injustice" pass his lips. Not once. Inequality is not the problem, and it is not inequality that causes the harm and suffering in society. INJUSTICE is the problem, and it is injustice that causes the harm and suffering. If you are not talking about injustice, then you are evading the issue.

 

That's not his point, although it is certainly a valid one. The rationale of the welfare state is that it attempts to substitute charity for justice.

But charity is never a substitute for justice. Means-tested income support programs only encourage people to have no means, and destroy responsibility, motivation and family structures, with results we can all see all around us. Giving money to people on the condition that they first demonstrate they can't use it responsibly, let alone efficiently, will not teach them responsibility or efficiency.

If that were Wall Street's model, it wouldn't be so bad. Wall Street's actual model is, "everyone but the rich to be laid as human sacrifices on the altar of the greed, privilege and parasitism of the super-duper uber-rich." That is the key fact: finance capitalism is a cult of human sacrifice.

No, we gave away liberty and justice in favor of privilege and parasitism, on the off chance that we might one day become net beneficiaries of the latter -- which you advocate as being somehow a model of economic fairness, civic trust, and familial responsibility.

Whether it happens to be easier or more difficult, why should we have to slave away for years to fill the pockets of rich, greedy, evil parasites just to secure their permission to own a home?

 

Because no money is made from a stock until it is sold. Say I bought 100 shares of BRK when it was around 8.00 and never sold a share. No money has been made on it yet. You don't make....or lose money until you sell.

 

If you want to build something, you need tools, he has them.

 

No, that's obviously false and absurd, as well as irrelevant. You simply made it up. Your claim is garbage with no basis in fact.

No, that's false. Your claims are just false. By your absurd and disingenuous "logic," if a truckload of gold bars is delivered to your house, you haven't made any money until you sell them. It's just absurd, disingenuous filth.

No, that claim is false, absurd, and disingenuous. If you own an asset whose value increases, you are wealthier. In addition, you are made wealthier by any dividends you receive.

 

That is how it works. No tax till you sell.

 

Taxes will be charged on interest or dividends. If you buy a truckload of gold bars at 35.00 an ounce and the value goes up to 1000.00 an ounce you do not pay taxes on the gold....until you sell.

 

No it wasn't. The author is quite correct that we've been had .. he/she is simply incorrect as regards the culprit. If the author is consciously in lockstep with the corporate overlords, then of course they will seek to position same as the bad guy, because doing so protects the device used to achieve their ends (a massive underclass of life-renters/consumers). The overlords can take that hit, because only Progressives and cafe socialists believe the lie.

The worst 'rent seekers' on the planet are the corporate overlords you empower via the Welfare State. They're the ones buying entire neighbourhoods, and pushing us ever closer to submission to life-renting ... via their cunning promotion of helplessness and dependence.

 

Sure, but that does not imply, as you so falsely and disingenuously claimed, that you are no wealthier until you sell.

 

But that aspect of income tax law does not mean you are no wealthier until you sell, a fact recognized in property tax law, which taxes you more when the value of the property increases.

 

No, he doesn't, as his evasion of the real issue shows.

 

1) Yes, it is valid.

2) Agree.

3) I wasn't referring to finance, I was referring to the Welfare State induced preference for the 'every man for himself' approach to life. Where there is no welfare, families/communities remain intact and mutually interdependent, and people retain their sense of social obligation to conform, compromise, cooperate, sacrifice etc. The WS has allowed us to belief we don't need to do any of that yucky stuff, and we can still eat. It's made us selfish lazy monsters .. with no ability to collect for survival. We now believe we're too special to live like 'peasants'.