You don't understand nuance. I said I could get behind a lot of it, not all of it. I can like parts of one thing and parts of another. I like the idea of breaking the crony capitalists over the government's knee. I would increase capital gains, because that hits the one percenters where they live. And that is where Bernie wants to hit them. They structure it to where they make peanuts in salary. Capital gains is where its at.
Originally Posted by WombRaider
I understand nuance just fine. What COG posted was a short list of the principle tenets of a libertarian agenda, straight up. You posted that you could get behind "a lot of it." I can only render a judgment based on what you
actually posted. If you meant something altogether different, you could have just said so!
This is moot, since thankfully for the US economy, Bernie Sanders will never get his way on tax and economic policy. But, are you not aware that big increases in the capital gains tax rate have been tried before? Go take a look at what happened in the 1970s, when a heavily Democratic post-Watergate congress pushed the rate to 40%. Know what happened next? That backfired, causing realizations and tax revenue to plummet.
The problem for lovers of soaking the rich with high capital gains tax rates is that no one is under compulsion to sell an asset, and is likely to choose not to do so if the AFTER-TAX return isn't particularly attractive.
There's plenty of history to look at here, since the capital gains tax rate has been lowered and raised a number of times over the last half-century. Yeah, I know. Most people don't learn much from history.