Because you’re poor and don’t have any influence over tax policy or enforcement.
This definitely won’t be popular, hope you stick with me to the end, but real estate is collateral that holds its value quite well most of the time, and is insured by the homeowner.
Stocks don’t have that. Companies with large valuations can liquidate overnight.
Does that mean it’s all a bad idea? No, but it just is different than the frame provided. They are different assets.
Taxing rich people in new ways can be a good thing. Taxing unrealized gains gets complicated, but can be done. But also comparing it to property tax is problematic for a lot of reasons. There are much better arguments, so I think we should stick with those. This one has too many easy attack angles with valid points, even if the main point of “rich people get out of taxes more than normies” is completely true.
Tax everyone, tbh.
If the taxes are going towards making life easier, maybe we’ll end up in a utopia and not the shithole corporations are building.
That’s the rub… Rich people don’t want life easier for society. They just want it easier for them.
If poor people have life easier, they might rise up and form unions, demand livable wages, and my million’s of dollars I inherent every year might be a few thousand less and that is unconscionable.
I agree with the core argument, here, but…
Interesting how “unrealized gains” only become a problem when wealthy folks are involved
…do you think wealthy people don’t own property? 🤔
Ah! So you’re telling me that wealthy people DO get taxed on the unrealized gains of the properties they own? Just like us normies do?
Not for long, see the push by Republican groups for abolishing property tax.
If property taxes are abolished it better be for EVERYBODY, not just for billionaires & corporations & private equity groups.
In the US, the mortgage interest tax write-off goes disproportionately to the wealthy. It also inflates housing prices, so it doesn’t really help affordability. Certainly not enough to justify the cost.
you know what’s not complicated? a wealth cap.
that or guillotines, those seem to be a permanent solution to this problem.
Wealth caps are actually complicated too.
Also… guillotines? permanent? LOLOLOL. “Meet the new boss… same as the old boss…” - The Who
when the new boss has to stare at the old bosses head until it rots off the pike it sets a line that’s not to be crossed.
Wow, let me just stand back and give you room to do your badass thing.
I might catch heat for this take, but having roads and schools is nice. But billionaires should be paying for the vast majority of it
You’re right though. However the problem is when people’s property tax goes up by more than their wages. My parents had an $800 increase even though the property assessment dropped by 100k. They keep allowing all this residential to go up without letting industrial build aswell meaning the tax burden mostly on residential and not commercial.
Til, I pay less than a grand a year on two properties but I’m also in a fairly rural area.
It’s all bullshit guys, like on the other side we have to pay $1500 a month rent because the bank doesn’t believe we can afford a $1000 a month mortgage.
Anyway I’m pretty sure $1,000 mortgage payments are a thing of the past.
Technically it was people they hired to convince us.
the complication comes from th tax lawyers getting loopholes and diaphanous exemptions implanted in the code
The “it’s not real money until it’s sold” argument is such horseshit. Just give it to me then if it’s not real. It’s like saying the money in your bank account isn’t real until you take it out at an atm. Dumbest shit, but for some reason a super appealing argument because people keep repeating it.
They can’t give it to you because it’s not real.
Also your money in your account isn’t real until you take it out of the bank is true. You never heard of a rush on the bank? Your bank isn’t keeping most of your money, they are using it. The system only works if everyone believes it works, but if everyone took it the money, 90% of people would find out there money isn’t there.
Same with taxing stocks. It only works if everyone isn’t rushing to the market to sell. If we taxed stocks, the money would have to come from somewhere or the system collapses. This is why no party has dared yet taxing unsold stocks. It would collapse the system.
Have you heard of a federal reserve? Yes your bank doesn’t have your money, but someone does. Your money someone else has is insured by the federal reserve so bank runs don’t happen. You’re talking about an economy that existed 100 years ago.
You clearly didn’t know how money works
You are so very wrong. The Fed does NOT have the cash, nobody does.
It exists only in the banking system itself with no tangible assets to back the majority up, we don’t have the actual cash to cover even 10% of deposits.
Where did you hear “the fed has the money”? Please share how the Fed “has the money” (or anybody else).
The “insurance” will collapse, just as the banks
You’re talking about an economy that does not exist. The FED does not have the cash.
Also, please note the more cash that they do print, the less the dollar is worth… this is called “inflation”.
They can’t give it to you because it’s not real
You literally can. You can transfer ownership of stocks. Dumb argument.
How did transferring stock ownership help the common person, or help the government run programs?
Until you actually can’t, super dumb argument. We’ve seen these “bank runs” over and over again, they aren’t mysteries.
Are Ronnie Reagan’s advisors still alive? Those fuckers were heavily involved in creating the present day mess.
If only Jimmy Carter is re-elected in 1980…
But all those years people kept saying even though he was fundamentally a really great guy, a man of the people, he was one of the worst Presidents we’ve ever had. (??)
+1…The US Naval Academy graduate would have ended the BS in the middle-east too.
It’s wild how the rules work. We pay taxes on every little unrealized gain, while the wealthy can enjoy tax-free yachting lifestyles in Dubai with zero capital gains or annual taxes. The gap just keeps getting wider.
Owning stocks instead of real property is not wealth. If you don’t like the system, sell your house to buy stocks instead.
Yeah, just be homeless, that will solve all your problems.
Okay a history lesson on how capitalism started and feudalism fell.
When you are “rich” in feudal society it means you have land. Land that everyone sees, that gives predictable income and even least educated peasant would be able to tax you reasonably (reasonably = as high as possible without you starting a rebellion over it). But then come merchants - they can have a wagon full of wood or just a small pouch of spices and it would be worth the same. Nobody really knows how much their wares earn because it fluctuates and every goods transport is a huge risk. So the merchants gain wealth indefinitely because king can’t see how much they have ant tax them accordingly, while landowners get poor because they are taxed to oblivion.
Now who is the modern “nobility”? Who has wealth tied up and measured in such a way that government knows exactly how much to tax them? Wage workers. In fact your employer rats you out to government on how much you earn. In exchange things like companies, banks, stocks, loans etc. are in the “nobody knows how much they are worth” category. Say you are taxed 10% on the value of all the stocks you own, this means you have to sell 10% of your stocks annually, and by selling stocks you make those stocks less valuable for everyone… so technically they should be taxed less because value drops down? Generally speaking if taxing something changes it’s value drastically then governments avoid taxing it.
My personal solution - outlaw stocks, bonds and loans for fucks sake.
Say you are taxed 10% on the value of all the stocks you own, this means you have to sell 10% of your stocks annually,
Myth.
You can transfer the stocks themselves to the IRS, and leave the IRS with the responsibility for liquidating them. We can require the IRS to look at the total traded volume of any issue they acquire, and prohibit them from selling more than 1% of that volume in the same time period. Liquidated shares will comprise no more than 1%; those shares will not significantly affect the market value of the issue.
My personal solution - outlaw stocks, bonds and loans for fucks sake.
“Stock” is what the ownership interest is distributed among multiple people. When two people equally build a business together, they each hold a “share” of that business’s “stock”. Banning “stocks” means banning every type of joint ownership, which is every type of business except “sole proprietorship” and “government enterprise”. Banning stocks is only feasible in a completely centralized economy.
Banning Bonds and Loans is even less feasible, and results in even more absurdities. Taken to extremes, your Amazon driver would have to collect payment at time of delivery, not at time of order. Payment before delivery could be considered a type of loan. Likewise, a business’s order to a vendor for supplies would have to be paid at time of delivery. Any other time would be considered a “loan” one way or another.
Say you are taxed 10% on the value of all the stocks you own, this means you have to sell 10% of your stocks annually, and by selling stocks you make those stocks less valuable for everyone… so technically they should be taxed less because value drops down?
Just a note, suggesting a 10% tax is pure fear mongering that billionaires and capitalists use to scare people. The average property tax rate in the United States is 1.1% so that’s a reasonable percentage to give. People don’t sell 1% of their home every year.
Property taxes are a thing. Stocks are property.
I honest to god used 10% as an idea of “ridiculously low tax” but I guess the topic of problems with billionaires may be too american for me.
Stocks should be taxed on buy/sell and yearly hold though.
I honest to god used 10% as an idea of “ridiculously low tax”
You live in a country that has 10% property tax rates?
IMO just stop letting them borrow against the unrealized values. You can borrow against what you’ve paid taxes on.
Just have countries force the “you can’t charge interest” rule on Christians.
Islam coming later was able to see the obvious loophole so they added you can’t accept loans with interest btw.
Though this does interfere with separation of church and state it seems countries already forgot about that.
I enjoyed reading this perspective, thanks. It’s definitely compelling.
Yeah, the financial market was never actually useful. Its just a money vacuum that the rich benefit from
You wouldn’t even have to make a huge reform to make a big difference. If we changed using “unrealized gains” as collateral to count as realizing those gains, the ultra wealthy would pay a fuck ton more in taxes. Also, the interest on those loans should not be deductible. Boo hoo if you end up with a margin call. Don’t make risky bets.
This is where I stand on it. Charging taxes on unrealized gains is never going to happen, and its not like we’re going to give them a refund if it swings the other way.
Taxing collateralizion and usage of the unrealized gains would be massive, and if they don’t like the new system, then sell them and pay taxes like everyone else.
Edi: also you can audit what they spend and how they got the money to afford it to trigger the tax. Knowing someone’s unrealized net worth can be incredibly complicated beyond public stock ownership, and even then that can be hidden as well.
Don’t try to tax the dollar value of the securities. Enact a wealth tax of the securities themselves. Transfer shares of the security to the IRS, to be liquidated slowly over time. Non-liquid securities would be held much like a lien.
That’s significantly more complicated for no real benefit. It actually carries a much higher risk for the IRS as the securities are volital.
All you have to do is tax them when they use the assets as collateral, and for good measure tax the loan as income.
You could even throw in a minimum threshold to not apply it to regular people, and force them to pay people more in the process. This can be achieved by setting the threshold to a variable, like 100x the average annual take home pay of the bottom 20% of earners (~$1.6m) and make it a annual total of loans to close the loophole of a bunch of small loans.
If they want cheaper loans people have to be paid more.
All you have to do is tax them when they use the assets as collateral,
If you tax loans backed by collateral, the banks will just change their lending policies on unsecured personal loans. No collateral = no tax on the use of that collateral. The method of taxation you are suggesting is trivial to evade.
That’s significantly more complicated for no real benefit.
It is more complicated, but the benefit is immense. The benefit is that Shareholding becomes much less valuable to the oligarch Problem Class, and much more valuable to the Working Class. Company ownership and control is driven toward workers. Working Class shareholders become the predominant voice in determining company policy. Profit extraction goes to Working Shareholders rather than the Problem Class.
It actually carries a much higher risk for the IRS as the securities are volital.
Describe that risk. Remember: The IRS is not owed dollars. They are only owed the shares. The dollar value of those shares is entirely irrelevant.
