Instead of taxing unrealized gains, why not disallow the top 1%, those billionaires, from using their assets (stocks, etc) as collateral and living off of loans, aka tax-free debt, just to avoid "paying their fair share".
If people like Elon, Zuckerberg, and Bezos want to live like billionaires they should have to sell some stock for realized income to do so.
This is just another slippery slope.
All unjust taxation should be objected to.
All taxation is unjust
Still necessary though, public infrastructure needs to be paid for somehow.
What do you mean by "public"?
Infrastructure that everyone uses. Roads, bridges, sewer and water treatment, electrical grid, etc. things like that.
Everyone uses internet without a special internet tax to build out networks. Why can't other utilities function the same way?
That's a good point, the internet has reached a level of adoption where very few people don't have access to it. Yet people pay for it via for-profit isps. And oftentimes they do so at inflated prices with little to no upgrade in infrastructure. Isps are just milking us for all they can. Perhaps it's time that it is seen as a public utility, and treated as such.
The inflated prices are in places where the ISP has a regulated monopoly backed by state violence. Basically government with an extra step.
Why do so many American municipalities hate free markets?
Yeah but when it comes to ISPs most places are monopolies. Same with the power companies. If free market solutions could fix this problem, I would think it would have happened by now, there's no "big government" regulations preventing it. Don't get me wrong, I'd be perfectly fine with a free market solution. I'm just not holding my breath that it would work, or even be the most efficient path.
I think the information superhighway should be treated as just that, a public highway. Let businesses flourish on the infrastructure but maintain the infrastructure and such a way that it's equal for all.
Is he watching me? I said basically the same thing, before he did.
The correct way to close that loophole is for everyone to start using it. This worked famously well with Fringe Benefits.
Loopholes are not accidents.
Perhaps Bitcoin will facilitate it and drive adoption. đ
This is workable, especially because the value of the asset being borrowed against would need to be valued correctly based on the lenderâs underwriting. Thatâs a fairer and more actionable method than some assessorâs âopinion of valueâ which can be arrived at different ways and to varying degrees.
Just want to point out that the 1% is not who this should be aimed at. Itâs the 0.1% and the 0.01% who mostly using these strategies. Put another way, itâs not something your average millionaire is doing. Itâs the centi-millionaires and billionaires.
To put a fine point on it, we want *more* millionaires. Iâll take a thousand millionaires over 1 billionaire any day. Your average millionaire is someone who has built or runs a successful small business with 10-100 employees. We want a tax structure that incentivizes more of these. Itâs better for both the employer and the employee⊠and the customer, actually.
