Glassnoser
19d ago
You do avoid some of it though by delaying it. The rate is effectively higher. The original investment was the same in both cases. There was no rebalancing.
Glassnoser
22d ago
If you owe any capital gains tax, you're almost certainly already I'm the top tax bracket and you pay less tax the longer you go without selling.
Capgains are taxed based on a percentage of the appreciation. It's not like a financial transactions tax that is a flat fee every time a trade is made. A 20% gain will be subject to the same tax as 2 equivalent 10% gains would be.
Yes, but if you have to pay tax on the first 10%, you won't get another 10% gain. Let's say you have a $1,000 investment that grows at 10% per year and the capital gains tax is 25%. If you sell after two years, you'll have gained $210 and pay $52.50 in tax, leaving you with $1,157.50.
If instead you sold and rebought after one year, then you'd have a gain of $100 that year, leaving you with $1,075 after tax. That would give you another gain of $107.50 after the next year, in which you'd pay $26.88 after tax, leaving you with $1,155.62.
Dividends are taxed at either the personal income tax rate, or the capgains rate if they're qualified dividends.
It could be in a tax sheltered account though.
Glassnoser
23d ago
The median Canadian does have siblings. My point was actually that the average (not median) Canadian doesn't have enough siblings and does own enough property such that he comes out ahead.
Glassnoser
24d ago
I think you're imagining someone with a greater future housing need than what they have already paid for while my point is that Canadians, on average own more housing than what they need. This necessarily true because of the fact that homeowners and landlords are disprortionately Canadian while renters are disproportionately foreigners.
The boomers also have parents who own or owned property they inherited part of and they also own investment properties or REITs.
Glassnoser
24d ago
There is no reason why it has to be delayed. The parents can sell at any time.
We are talking about housing affordability? What do you mean I'm being too materialistic? If materialism doesn't matter, why complain about high housing prices or a reduced standard of living?
Glassnoser
24d ago
One issue that I've heard from friends and relatives who have had to hire contractors lately for construction and renovation work is that they are extremely unreliable. They will just drop a job at the last minute even though they agreed to do it and the rest of the project depends on them doing it. This has caused people to have to scramble at the last minute and go around begging people to help them out or it has delayed projects by months.
Glassnoser
24d ago
The less frequently you sell your assets, the lower the effective tax rate due to capital gains tax. Also, if it's something that generates a return other than through appreciation (e.g. a dividend paying stock or real estate), by holding to it longer, you realize more of the value in a form that doesn't count as a capital gain and so you pay less tax.
Glassnoser
24d ago
The average person blames things like foreign buyers, investors, and AirBnb which have almost no effect on property values, instead of high labour costs and regulations that restrict housing supply.
Glassnoser
24d ago
Yes, there is no reason why am increase in property values should mean an increase in property taxes. Cities don't need more money just because property values are higher. They should fall and as a percentage of property values when property values rise.
Glassnoser
24d ago
In Canada, your estate would have to pay a tax on 50% of the $999 capital gain before your heir inherited anything.
Yes, I understand that they have reasons for not wanting to give a definition, but that still makes it very frustrating for an open-minded person who wants to hear their ideas explained and defended.
It's also quite annoying when a group keeps saying "we're being mistreated so it's only natural we organize and defend white rights and by the way we want a white ethnostate and no we won't say what that means". I have no interest in supporting a movement that refuses to say what they're actually going to do once they have more influence. If you want more influence from me, you need to explain what it is you are trying to accomplish.
And it's not that I have high expectations for being convinced, but I will certainly be open-minded and give it a fair hearing.
The answer is that it's a peripheral question that need only be answered once white nationalism is closer to the levers of power.
I totally disagree with that because the merits of your movement entirely depend on how you define it. If your argument is that whites have certain inherent traits upon which society depends, you do actually need to say who those white people are. I don't see how people can be expected to agree on those traits if you can't agree on who you're talking about.
Once WNs have a power gradient to follow, then will be the time to start hardening feelings into policies, a process that will be constrained by whatever alliances and compromises make sense to those people, in those positions, with those connections, at that time.
That position makes sense if you're already convinced that having a white ethno-state is the right thing to do and that you will personally benefit from it regardless of precisely how the white race is defined, but for most people that isn't the case. They're either belong to one of these groups (e.g. Jews) whose place is insecure or they're white people who don't know exactly what you're proposing and therefore cannot assess whether it makes any sense.
For example, I personally think Jews are a clear net positive contribution to society, while many white nationalists are virulent anti-semites. Whether you include Jews is not an "edge case". It's a pretty important detail that determines how much the sense the movement actually makes. Or what about Iranians? The ones I've met have all been great. It matters to me whether they're included.
Now, to be fair, I don't see myself as likely to be convinced in any case, but I still think it matters whether a white ethno-state means including some of the ethnicities that seem like clear net contributors and more questionable ones that maybe have certain social problems like high crime rates or substance abuse issues. At the minimum, we should be able to agree that that is a very different argument. And you should recognize that the vast majority of the white people are in the same boat. If you want to have any hope of advancing your argument, you do need to work out some of these details. Some other extremists, like anarcho-capitalists for example, I find to be actually quite good at working out these details.
EDIT: Why is this getting downvoted so much?
Glassnoser
25d ago
They don't have to wait for their parents to die. Their parents can sell their homes or take out mortgages. Yes, if you have siblings, your parents have an above average number of children and you are probably not coming out ahead in this system, but the average Canadian does.
Glassnoser
25d ago
No, I'm definitely not expecting them to agree with each other. I've witnessed arguments over whether Jews are white or whether Iranians or Armenians are white. I've witnessed arguments over whether you need to be 100% pure European or whether some lower threshold is good enough. I'm just saying that when you ask any given white nationalist for a definition, they usually reject the question outright.
Flipping the woke pyramid doesn't work because the main question is who makes the cut and is allowed to stay or immigrate to your ethno-state.
Glassnoser
25d ago
No, I think many want a racially white society where there is a substantial reduction in the non-white population and immigration restrictions based on race. For example, I've heard proposals to split the United States up so that part of it can be a white ethno-state and another part can be given to blacks. To achieve that, you do have to actually define who is white.
Glassnoser
25d ago
Your capital gains is a return on after-tax income. You don't pay almost nothing in taxes. You pay the same amount of taxes as anyone else who earned that same amount of money.
Or the billionaires who just take out margin loans forever, then pass it all on to their heirs, who then get a stepped up basis with no capital gains.
What do you mean? What are you talking about? Why wouldn't they have to pay capital gains?
Glassnoser
25d ago
Here is another proposal: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/tax-luxury-not-wealth-or-income/
He's not trying to smuggle a plan for the rich. Read the part where he advocates for a progressive consumption tax again.
At this point you might be thinking “Yes, but wouldn’t eliminating all income and consumption taxes be a giveaway to the rich?” No, it would be restoring fairness by taxing the thrifty and spendthrift at equal rates. If we think the rich should pay more tax, then let’s put a progressive consumption tax into effect. This is easy to do, just turn the regressive FICA into a progressive payroll tax, with much higher rates for those with high wages and salaries. This sort of tax can achieve any desired degree of progressivity. Unlike most libertarians, I think a progressive payroll tax is desirable for simple utilitarian reasons.
He is explaining that there is no reason to tax capital gains if your goal is to reduce inequality. From the second article:
What “principle” suggests that patient people should be taxed at higher rates than impatient people—even if they have the same lifetime wealth?
Your only answer that seems to be that they have different wealth, which he explains is not true, so what reason remains for taxing capital gains?
As for what is wrong with discouraging saving, he never says that saving is inherently good. He gives a very clear and specific reason for why it's bad to discourage saving.
The inheritance tax discourages saving, and thus reduces the capital stock. This lowers the real wage of workers who work with physical capital.
This one may clarify a few things.
Glassnoser
25d ago
Taxing capital gains is not a way of avoiding taxing labour. The capital gain is a return on an initial investment that was earned with labour. Taxing it is taxing labour, just in a way that creates a deadweight loss by taxing someone who saves more than someone who spends. You get all of the deadweight loss of taxing labour and then some.
In my third link, Scott Sumner directly addresses the point about inequality. Taxing capital gains doesn't reduce inequality. The two brothers in his example are equally wealthy. But one chooses to invest his wealth and the other chooses to spend it. The fact that the one who invests it earns a capital gain does not mean he is wealthier. His brother had the same opportunity and didn't take it because he valued earlier consumption over later consumption. Claiming there is a difference in equality is just like claiming there is a difference inequality between someone who bought watermelon and someone who bought blueberries.
The author is saying the current privileged mix of taxing investments less than labor income isn't good enough, that we should institute massive taxes on labor to reduce all taxes from investments to 0.
He's not saying that at all. You've completely misunderstood. You should read the articles more carefully because he directly addresses this kind of argument.
Glassnoser
25d ago
Were you specifically asking how the state is supposed to go from 50% nonwhite to 0% nonwhite?
No, I was asking who counts as white.
Glassnoser
25d ago
A sales tax is a tax on consumption. A capital gains tax is a tax on capital. Taxing capital is taxing savings. It is not really taxing wealth, because an equally rich person who spends his money right away avoids it. It is actually easier to just tax consumption with a sales tax and then you can tax extreme wealth but in a way that is fair and doesn't discourage saving and investing.
The capital gains tax is especially absurd (compared to other taxes on capital) because it not only penalizes saving but also penalizes frequently selling assets, and the tax is on the nominal returns, not the real returns. If you invest in government bonds, your real tax after-tax return will be negative.
Scott Sumner is excellent on this subject and has written many blog posts on it. It's hard to pick the best one, but you should read a few. Here are some:
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/a-consumption-tax-is-a-wealth-tax/
https://www.econlib.org/capital-gains-nonsense/
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/income-a-meaningless-misleading-and-pernicious-concept/
Glassnoser
25d ago
That is still really vague. I am talking about people who want to restrict immigration based on race. What would that actually mean? Once they can answer that, we can talk about whether that actually makes sense, whether it could work, how it would be done, and whether there are better ways of achieving those goals. White nationalists don't seem to want to do any of those things. But they are decisions they would eventually have to make.
Glassnoser
25d ago
I'm a bit confused by this concept. Elsewhere, I've read that Scotland should also be on the other side of the line. Is this actually a robust concept and does it really explain anything?
I used to argue with white nationalists a lot many years ago on /r/anarcho_capitalism and what I found very frustrating is they refused to properly defend their point of view, particularly on the point of who counted as white. The rare time they would say, it was usually strictly people born on the European continent, so Turks in East Thrace were white but not Turks on the other side of the Bosporus strait were not, I guess. Attempts to pin them down on definitions like this were taken as bad faith tricks to undermine their cause and there was not a lot of interest in having real intellectual discussion about the merits of white nationalism. I found I could get them to explain why they thought whites were superior to non-whites, but I could not get anywhere discussing the practicalities of how a white ethno-state would work.
I completely agree that it makes more sense to select immigrants by the traits that whites are claimed to possess. Selecting them based on race is extremely crude.
Walt seemed like he was participating in good faith, but I found he rambled on a lot and would have preferred to have him pinned down more on some of these issues. I think he reinforced my impression of the alt-right, which is not that they were a bunch of super intellectual misfits but that they actually had terrible epistemic habits and were white nationalists more for the vibes as the kids say rather than its intellectual merits. I've read some of Richard Spencer's stuff and seen interviews with him. He's not that smart. I haven't been impressed by anything from the alt-right as far as intellectual arguments go.
I think that's separate from believing in human biodiversity. It's the leap from human biodiversity to white nationalism that I have never found convincing. I think there is a parallel here with communists, who are extremely difficult to convince to enter into a serious debate. Attempts to debate communists are shot down as risking undermining class solidarity. Similarly, attempts to debate white nationalists are shot down (though not nearly as quickly and definitively) as risking undermining white racial solidarity.
Another parallel is how communists put a huge amount of effort into debating theory (though not at addressing the best counter-arguments to that theory as they mostly only debate other communists) and almost none in how a communist society would actually work.
Why wouldn't the ecumene include Ethiopia and India?
Regression to the mean is an argument for having higher or lower trait thresholds for certain races, but not for excluding those races altogether.
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