Personally, I'd like to abolish the stock market altogether. But this is an attractive, actionable policy

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[–] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (9 children)

It's an absurd notion that you cannot tax unrealized gains. We already do when it comes to property taxes.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It's also probably not out of the question to find a way to tax the super low interest loans that the 1% get as well.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    "Worth" Dec 31 - "Worth Jan 1" = Total Annual Income.

    Tax that.

    Easy, done.

    All these billionaires like to throw around their worth, fine, but if Elon Musk (for example) is worth 1 Trillion at the end of the year, and he was worth 300 Billon at the start, tax that 700 Billion difference as income.

    No wrote off bull shit either at that level.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    That sounds interesting, how do property taxes work where you are?

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    A lot of property tax systems require you to pay a percentage of the estimated value of the property every year in tax. Which is exactly the point, unrealised gains being taxed in the case of your property appreciating while you live there.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Importantly, at least around here, your property gets reappraised (estimated) every few years. It usually doesn't take into account the condition or any upgrades, but it does account for market conditions. If you disagree with their estimate you can get a full appraisal, which will account for those specific changes.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    I found this counter argument pretty compelling: the trouble is that investments are extremely mobile, and fairly cheap to obfuscate. Incorporating a big effective business is not. Property is not.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    We are already spending billions upon billions spying and monitoring the American people. I'm betting we can turn a bit of that onto tracking investments.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I mean, we already do. It's not all that effective afaik? Preventing foreign ransomware from extracting money from american(-businesse)s via bitcoin is clearly within the state's mandate and incentives, has reliable bipartisan support, and seems like a pretty similar situation. We can't track and protect funds on a public ledger as it stands, and journalists struggle to track PAC political funding. I'm not sure the spy-state is up to it tbh.

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