You're right, but these are the incentives created by the system. It would be really hard to change this. What you call net income isn't. It's a fictional valu

You're right, but these are the incentives created by the system. It would be really hard to change this. What you call net income isn't. It's a fictional valuation metric for current possessions. It's like when you own a house, and the house goes up in value. Should that value increase be counted as income ? Because it would force a lot of people to sell and certainly wouldn't be a good thing for middle America.