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So what about if your Stocks lost value in the year? Same scenario, 100million in stocks but due to a bad economy you they are now worth 95 million Do you be

by syshum 6y ago

So what about if your Stocks lost value in the year? Same scenario, 100million in stocks but due to a bad economy you they are now worth 95 million Do you believe CA should collect $380,000 from someone that already lost 5 million that year? There is always risks in investments, it is not always gains. CA does not properly account for that IMO Further you will not get me support income based taxation either, I find income based taxation to be more immoral and unethical than wealth based taxation. It is literally stealing a persons labor I am a proponent of Henry George's Single-Tax System

est31 6y ago
Huh interesting, didn't know about George's tax system. Sounds intriguing and would solve some real problems. As for losing money, yeah in that scenario it's worse. The dutch system sounds better in the regard that it only taxes gains, but of course you'd here have issues as well with volatile valuations where you have gains in one year and losses in the next. Regarding your potential loss scenario, hypothetically if you've owned 100 million one year and then over the course of 3 years it went down to just 1 million. Wouldn't it be beneficial for society had you contributed a little piece of those 100 million to society when you still had it? Other than you just holding onto it, benefitting nobody, not even you, as you lost it :). In the scenario where your money is stable or increases in value, this is no issue. That being said, I'm not the greatest fan of estate taxes. My main issue with them is that they basically force you to have some degree of returns otherwise your money disappears, which is IMO kinda sad as it encourages people to invest in even greedier ways. You can e.g. buy a rental property and come up with shitty reasons to evict the tenants. Or you can buy it and keep them around for as long as they live.
- syshum 6y ago
  This is where my libertarianism come roaring to the fore. To me one of the most dangerous arguments for a public policy is "for the greater good" so much misery and suffering has been inflicted on society by groups and policies based on "the greater good" Further your position requires one to assume the government will inherently spend the money better than allowing a person to keep the money to invest in a business or blow it on expensive cars yachts (and yes even though things are a net good for society) , your scenario of 100million just vanishing is not realistic as people will move investments in response to losses like that. We can however look at history and see clearly that government does not always spend money wisely Just look at this comment thread for the cognitive dissonance the surrounds government spending. People asking for CA to justify more taxation in the face of their failure of public policy are simply meet with arguments that even more money will solve the problems You see government programs are never bad, and never fail because they are bad policy, it ALWAYS because we did not tax or spend enough, no matter how many times this pattern is repeated it is never enough. They could steal 100% of all wealth over 30 Million, and when the problems are not resolved (and they wont be) the supporters of the programs will demand more money, say taking all wealth over 20, then 10, then... Remember the original income/wealth tax only applied to the top 3% of incomes now it applies to 50%... Government taxation on income only ever expands, that is the big problem here.

by syshum 6y ago

est31 6y ago

Huh interesting, didn't know about George's tax system. Sounds intriguing and would solve some real problems. As for losing money, yeah in that scenario it's worse. The dutch system sounds better in the regard that it only taxes gains, but of course you'd here have issues as well with volatile valuations where you have gains in one year and losses in the next. Regarding your potential loss scenario, hypothetically if you've owned 100 million one year and then over the course of 3 years it went down to just 1 million. Wouldn't it be beneficial for society had you contributed a little piece of those 100 million to society when you still had it? Other than you just holding onto it, benefitting nobody, not even you, as you lost it :). In the scenario where your money is stable or increases in value, this is no issue. That being said, I'm not the greatest fan of estate taxes. My main issue with them is that they basically force you to have some degree of returns otherwise your money disappears, which is IMO kinda sad as it encourages people to invest in even greedier ways. You can e.g. buy a rental property and come up with shitty reasons to evict the tenants. Or you can buy it and keep them around for as long as they live.

syshum 6y ago
This is where my libertarianism come roaring to the fore. To me one of the most dangerous arguments for a public policy is "for the greater good" so much misery and suffering has been inflicted on society by groups and policies based on "the greater good" Further your position requires one to assume the government will inherently spend the money better than allowing a person to keep the money to invest in a business or blow it on expensive cars yachts (and yes even though things are a net good for society) , your scenario of 100million just vanishing is not realistic as people will move investments in response to losses like that. We can however look at history and see clearly that government does not always spend money wisely Just look at this comment thread for the cognitive dissonance the surrounds government spending. People asking for CA to justify more taxation in the face of their failure of public policy are simply meet with arguments that even more money will solve the problems You see government programs are never bad, and never fail because they are bad policy, it ALWAYS because we did not tax or spend enough, no matter how many times this pattern is repeated it is never enough. They could steal 100% of all wealth over 30 Million, and when the problems are not resolved (and they wont be) the supporters of the programs will demand more money, say taking all wealth over 20, then 10, then... Remember the original income/wealth tax only applied to the top 3% of incomes now it applies to 50%... Government taxation on income only ever expands, that is the big problem here.