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Theory — the new unrealized capital gain tax is designed (or will have the effect of) forcing people like Elon Musk to surrender control of corporations resulting in PMC control instead of founder control.
As some detail, there is a proposed 25% tax on unrealized gains for the super wealthy coupled with a 44% tax on realized gains. So let’s say you own 10b of a 100b company. If you do nothing you will owe 2.5b of tax. But if you sell 2.5b, you’d actually owe more! So you end up having to sell a pretty big chunk of your stake. This means that before companies get really large founders have to sell a big chunk of their equity preventing super wealth. It also changes incentive structures for founders making them more likely to cash out.
Once they cash out, PMC will take control. PMC coexists with modern democratic policy. Therefore, the democrat tax proposals help ensure corporations are run by allies.
I don’t see a tax on unrealized gains passing. The entire lobby of every super rich person in the US would have to fail, and that would surely represent an extraordinary failure.
The better approach would be to tighten up estate taxes so that the wealthiest families have a ‘minimum required tax burden’ to pay when a patriarch dies, regardless of what measures they’ve taken to transfer wealth in life. So if Bob dies having unquestionably accumulated $500m in his life,
In any case, this wouldn’t require anyone to relinquish control, because you could borrow against your equity to pay the tax bill.
That you think there's a "better approach" means the proposal is already working. You've already accepted the frame that there's some problem to be solved to get the government more revenue from "rich people" (which may start with hundred-millionaires but will quickly if not immediately hit hundreth-millionaires), and now you're only arguing about the form of the massive tax increase.
Of course the rich should pay more. Since 2009 Western governments have engaged in propping up to extreme effect a ridiculous, comically unfair asset bubble that has made rich people vastly richer than at any time in the previous century while regular people have to contend with much more expensive house prices and only modestly higher incomes.
And I say that as someone who has benefited personally from that asset pricing bubble more than almost anyone, perhaps anyone, else here.
Why "of course"? The rich already pay essentially all the federal income taxes in the US.
Taxing rich people more will not reduce house prices nor increase income for "regular people". Further, real median income had been increasing up until COVID. Yes, housing was higher, but there's always something you could pick that would be higher.
I'm sorry you feel guilty about your success; I've worked for a living.
How much harder have you really worked the average hard working middle class person? I’m no communist, but this fanatical obsession with meritocracy regardless of inequality has never seemed particularly sound to me.
More than some, less than others. I've certainly worked a lot less hard than some of the people this proposal targets, in particular Elon Musk. The point isn't how much more or less I worked for it, the point is I worked for it. The government didn't hand it out to me as some prize which it's perfectly fair for them to take back. What does inequality have to do with it? Why should I be upset that Elon Musk has a crapload more than me, and why should I feel guilty that I have more than someone who pushed a broom their whole life? Or did nothing productive at all? For what reason should the government be trying to equalize income levels?
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He didn’t say he worked harder than the average hard working middle class person. He said he worked for a living, presumably about the same as they did.
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