Did I say mandatory? I meant optional! You’re “free” to die in a cardboard box under a freeway as a market capitalist scarecrow warning to the other ants so they keep showing up to make us more!

  • bamfic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    26 minutes ago

    That’s how the rich get richer. They never gamble with their own money. They gamble with other people’s money, secured (hah) by their assets.

    Yes a minority of us peons who are privileged enough to own property or lots of stocks can play-act like they’re rich by taking out reverse mortgages or doing options trading, but it’s nothing like what the actual rich can get away with.

  • Copernican@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 hours ago

    So how does taxing unrealized gains work. If I purchase stock X at a specific price. If the stock goes up and I now am holding 150% of my original value. Let’s say it hovers there for 3 more years. After 3 years it tanks and is now worth only 50% of my original purchases. Are people suggesting that I pay taxes on the unrealized gain of 50%, even though I end up selling at loss and have realized negative value. Doesn’t that mean I am being taxed on losing money? How does that make sense?

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      29 minutes ago

      So how does taxing unrealized gains work

      It doesn’t. This was written by someone who doesn’t understand what they’re talking about, and probably doesn’t know that they themselves have unrealized gains in a 401k somewhere.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      The moment you use them as a collateral, they should be taxed as money.

      You took a 10 billions loan with the actions you have as collateral? You pay taxes on these 10 billions.

      Right now, the system is rigged because the richs get to transform their collateral into liquidity while paying 0 taxes on that, and they can even write off the interest on the interest incurred.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        I guess that’s whats lost in the meme. Just because you “can” use something as collateral doesn’t mean you “are” using something as collateral. The language should be more accurate to describe actual use vs hypothetical.

    • BaldManGoomba@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      52 minutes ago

      No…see you bought the stock. You don’t have enough of a hoard for us to worry about not to mention the value of that stock will be used in the economy more than likely when You retire or need it.

      How it will work is you are an early owner or investor and your hoard pile is over $100 million. Now when your hoard pile goes up 7% you have $107 million. We tax you on your wealth over $ 100 million. Let’s say 25% tax on that $7 million if you choose to hold onto it. Your wealth tax bill will be $1,750,000 that year (plus minus other factors). You can choose to sell your $7 million and it is currently taxed at 18% for realized tax gains if you held onto the stock for over a year or income % tax rate if short term trade.

      What this does is increase the public ownership in companies as there is more stock for everyone and decreases the hoarding of companies by the wealthy. It also makes stock prices more honest so people don’t hoard the stock count to inflate prices.

      Let’s say you own other assets. A house. It is just like property tax if you can’t afford the tax bill you don’t own the house or…your house isn’t worth that much. If you have tons of homes you may have to sell it to the people rather than rent. And if your hoard of assets is in other random collectibles you pay the tax bill to maintain your collection or share the ownership with others.

      As for private companies that will be an interesting thing. I would say when your company is worth $100 million you have to divest the ownership to others. But idk. Legalize will figure it out we can also have exceptions for things like house value or other random things

    • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 hour ago

      Why not tax on a regular basis based on the current value, just like we do with houses?

    • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      It’s not. Unrealised gains is basically an item in your shelf that hasn’t been sold, you can tell other people this item worth X now and you can get a loan with that item as a guarantee, but since you haven’t sell it and turn it into money, you still have $0 and an item that worth X. These people failed basic economic.

      • Copernican@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        “can” vs “do” are different things. The meme quote describes hypothetical use, not actual use, as being something that should be taxable.

        • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 hours ago

          What you mean by “hypothetical use” vs “actual use”? In your own comment you mention nothing about “hypothetical use” yet here you talk about one, OOP also failed to mention anything about hypothetical use and only talk exclusively about unrealised gain. If unrealised gain(stock, asset, etc) is used to trade for another item, then yes, it’s already a realised gain, the tax should be levied on the item purchased or the asset sold, whichever makes sense. If the unrealised gain is used to secure a loan, then no, it shouldn’t be taxed because it’s only change hand on paper, and the loan came with interest, and you have to pay back that loan. Net worth is nothing but a dick measuring contest, taxing it makes no sense.

          So no, unrealised gain shouldn’t be taxed because it’s unrealised, it’s like taxing a grocery store’s unsold item.

  • Rakudjo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    5 hours ago

    You’re “free” to die in a cardboard box under a freeway

    Actually… They made that illegal. You’re free to rot in prison for being homeless, though!

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      3 hours ago

      Sitting here, watching every town council around my area pass a homeless ban after that SCOTUS ruling. Even the newspaper suddenly switched and said popular opinion swung 180 degrees in the last six months.

      What the fuck does one do at that point? It’s obviously manufactured consent. It’s blatantly unconstitutional to tell people they can’t exist on public land. It’s a human rights violation to be stuffed into a shelter that demands you be a better human than people who already have housing in order to get house money. At this point we’re just turning the homeless into the new scary minority.

      • bamfic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        25 minutes ago

        The goal is extermination and genocide. There is nowhere for the homeless to go except into the ground as dead bones, where they won’t bother the privileged and rich anymore.

    • gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 hours ago

      If it’s one homeless guy dieing under the bridge it’s a capitalist scarecrow sothat other people work harder.

      If it’s a hundred homeless guys dieing under bridges the people understand that the problem is not them, but capitalism. That’s illegal.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    5 hours ago

    What’s crazy is to calculate the average US income the census folks of the US government exclude billionaires because it would skew reality so much that people would call bullshit on the average with billionaires in the mix.

    so they get to be excluded from the “average wage per family” calculations made and distributed by the government.

    • Aezora@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      I think you’re conflating average and mean. When it comes to income average is typically median, which does include billionaires but wouldn’t skew the data due to their inclusion.

      • Animated_beans@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        Average and mean are the same thing (sum of everything divided by total number of things). Median is the middle number.

        • howrar@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 hours ago

          Colloquially, average is the mean. Mathematically, average can be either mean, median, or mode.

    • sketelon@eviltoast.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      4 hours ago

      I’ve never heard that, would be wild if that’s truly how they do it, I wonder what the average would be if they included the billionaire family’s.

  • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    6 hours ago

    I wouldn’t be a huge fan of taxing unrealized gains if we hadn’t been cutting taxes for the rich for 50 years. How else are we ever going to recover from that? These guys COULD have done the right thing and supported sensible taxation policies, but they didn’t, so fuck 'em. At this point it’s either this or the guillotine.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      You absolutely can have unrealized gains without a stock market. Build a business. Someone wants to buy it from you for $150,000 this year, someone else wants to buy it from you for $250,000 next year, you have unrealized gains of $100,000 from last year to this year.

      What we can do is apply an annual wealth tax of 1% of all registered securities, (stocks, bonds, etc) and exempt the first $10 million of each natural person. You don’t have to sell your shares; the SEC knows how much you’re holding, and will transfer them automatically to IRS liquidators, who will resell them on the open market in small lots, no more than 1% of total traded volume per month.

      Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk lose 1% of their empires per year until they are worth less than $10 million.

      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        Someone wants to buy it from you

        There’s your problem. Business shouldn’t be bought and sold either.

        What we can do is apply an annual wealth tax of 1% of all registered securities, (stocks, bonds, etc) and exempt the first $10 million of each natural person.

        That’s not my preferred solution, but I’d take it over nothing.

  • Goodie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    112
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    9 hours ago

    I think a law stating you can’t borrow against unrealized gains would be sensible.

    You can keep your unrealized gains forever, live of your dividends for all i care, and pay no tax. But realizing them, either through selling or borrowing against, triggers a taxation.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        32
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        8 hours ago

        “Yes*”

        *As with all rules, it can vary by country. As I understand it, the US tends to double tax dividends, which is a rabbit hole of why the US market chases valuation so hard

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        8 hours ago

        Dividends paid out to taxable accounts are taxed.

        Dividends that pay into non-taxable accounts can accumulate until they are withdrawn.

        So, for instance, if you own $100 of Exxon in a regular brokerage account and $100 in an IRA, the $5 dividend you get from the first account is taxable but the $5 from the second is not.

        This gets us to the idea of Trusts, Hedge Funds, and other tax-deferred vehicles. If you give $100 to a Hedge fund and it buys a stock in the fund that pays dividends, it never pays you the dividend on the stock so you never have to realize the dividend gain. You simply own “$100 worth of Citadel Investments” which becomes “$105 worth of Citadel Investments” when the dividend arrives.

        • deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          4 hours ago

          I think dividends in a tax-exempt accounts, like a traditional IRA, are only not taxed if you reinvest the dividend or just leave it in your brokerage account. If you move money from your IRA account to, say, your checking account, that’s when you pay taxes (and there are generally fees for moving money out of tax exempt accounts without meeting certain conditions, like being of retirement age).

        • Wwwbdd@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          8 hours ago

          Not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but if I pull a dividend I don’t pay tax initially, but when I do my income taxes it’s part of my income and I’d have to pay tax on it then

          • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            6 hours ago

            Careful with that. If you’re not making estimated tax payments on your dividends (or other capital gains) every quarter or increasing your withholdings from wages to compensate, and you owe too much at the end of the year, you can get hit with penalties and interest.

            For most people the quarterly dividends in their brokerage aren’t enough to trigger that, but as your savings grows and quarterly dividends become significant they might.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 hours ago

            Where I’m from, we don’t do that. All dividends come with an “imputation credit,” which basically says “this money’s already been taxed.”

      • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 hour ago

        Homes are taxed based on assessed value. They are already a form of taxing unrealized gains.

        Most of the population either has:

        1. no unrealized gains
        2. gains in a retirement account that we can’t borrow against
        3. gains in real estate that are taxed, but can be borrowed against
        4. a combo of 2 and 3

        I think it’s fair to ask that the rich play by the same rules. You can either borrow against your gains and pay taxes on them, or not pay taxes and not be able to borrow against them.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Depends on the exact implementation, but sure, you could happily write a version where an initial home loan isn’t hit, and only “top up” loans against the INCREASED value of your home is targeted.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      7 hours ago

      Mhm. There’s two very good reason unrealized gains aren’t taxed: volatility and cash flow. Are you and the government expected to swap cash back and forth everyday to correct for changes in the market? No that’s silly. Should people go into debt because they don’t have the cash to pay the taxes of a baseball card they happen to own that is suddenly worth millions? Also silly.

      For that same reason, using unrealized gains as security is dangerous, just like the subprime loans market was!

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 hours ago

        We’re talking about the stock market. And it would be quarterly or annual. Please stop exaggerating.

        • Mcdolan@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          6 hours ago

          Yeah owning a baseball card worth money sure whatever, if you pawn that card sorry, pay taxes. You use that card a to secure a loan with lower interest rates than you’d get without then sorry, you are realizing gains whether or not you want to admit it. This goes along one of the lawsuits against Trump. He lied to get favorable interest rates by overvaluing his assets to get better interest rates. If that’s against the law why the fuck is that not counted as a “gain” to use assets to secure favorable interest rates?

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        7 hours ago

        There’s a very good reason they should be taxed; half a dozen people are richer than god, and basically never pay any real amount of tax.

        • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          6 hours ago

          This would effectively lock out every small investor from the stock market due to the liability of both success and failure.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 hours ago

            No it wouldn’t. The proposal out there right now has a floor of something like a million dollars. Most of us will never need to worry about that.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            5 hours ago

            How so?

            “Oh no, I made money, better put a small percentage of my gains away for tax season, just like I do with all of my income, because I’m American and lack a good PAYE system”.

            • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              4 hours ago

              You’ve likely made a false assumption of stable value. Questions probably demonstrates best: Individuals are to pay taxes on value at what point in time? What if it was worth much more just previous to the time? What if it’s worth much less immediately after that time?

              The time will probably be Dec. 31st. A small investor can get wiped out by poor holiday earnings. Or, far more likely, stocks will be artificially shorted by hedge funds in January to create the same situation. With options shenanigans and asymmetric rules, it’s trivially easy for the big fish to immediately eat everyone else.

              • Goodie@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                4 hours ago

                Someone here has made a false assumption. In fact, I’m pretty sure we both have made several. The question is who has made a fatal false assumption? Let’s go.

                My root comment, at the top of all of this, was my idea that perhaps we should consider gains “realized” when they are sold OR used as a collateral in a loan.

                Your assertion is that it would wipe out small investors.

                I would question how many small investors are using their small investments as collateral in a loan?

                • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  4 hours ago

                  Anyone doing more than DCA retirement has collateralized their holdings for margin, prerequisite to options.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      How are you going to enforce that? The Bank can cite whatever they want for giving the loan.

      If we just tax them then it’s easily enforceable and it’s done.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 hours ago

        It can just be flipped on it’s head;

        How are you going to enforce taxing on value, the person can just cite whatever value they want for the asset.

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 hours ago

      Or doing so, it counts the loan as income and is taxed accordingly. But seriously, the main aim itself can also be taxed. A house is…

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 hours ago

        You’d have to put some controls in there for that solution to work. Hitting new homeowners with an immediate tax on “earning” $1,000,000 to pay for their house seems a bit cruel.

        • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 hours ago

          The unrealized gains is for 100 millionaires or more. I don’t think there is anyone with 100million in unrealized home value.

          • Goodie@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            5 hours ago

            I was talking for a hypothetical world where that law isn’t a thing and simply paying capital gains in “realized” gains is.

            Nut hey, yeah, sure, 100mil works too.

    • C126@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Seems more reasonable than taxing unrealized gains, although I’d prefer if the debate was on how to cut absurd amount of spending rather than trying to find new tax streams.

      • Goodie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        7 hours ago

        I’d rather we went back to taxing the rich properly and stopped having crumbling infrastructure.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    6 hours ago

    TBH I’m not even considered middle class where I live but I have Unrealized Gains in the form of $VYM and Bitcoin.

    I think we should tax loans where stocks are used as Collateral, or set a high bar for Unrealized Gains Tax.

    • evidences@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      The bar being talked about right now is a net worth of 100million usd, do you have a net worth of 100million? If not your bitcoin is safe.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 hours ago

        Maybe some current proposed legislature has set that bar, but this picture of a tweet does not talk about that.

        • TastehWaffleZ@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          5 hours ago

          That picture is referencing Kamala’s proposed tax policy where she wants to tax unrealized capital gains on individuals worth 100mill exclusively

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            4 hours ago

            The tweet does not say Kamala, it does not mention “The President’s Budget” that was announced by Biden early this year, it just says that unrealized gains are not being taxed.

            There is of course the implication of modern policy but I think it is healthy to include nuance and context as I have.

            • Soggy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              4 hours ago

              It’s almost like things can exist in a cultural context without explicitly defined connections.

              Just say “oh, I didn’t realize” instead of digging your heels in.

              • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                5
                ·
                4 hours ago

                Whats your problem, mate? Why is context and discussion banned in your world?

                You’ll only help the liars and fiends by painting Kamala’s policy as anything other than what it is.

        • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          5 hours ago

          That has been the baseline since the beginning. If you aren’t worth 100million there is no reason you shouldn’t support this.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 hours ago

            There is no beginning, Unrealized Gains taxes were enforced from the founding of this nation until the late 1960s when general properties taxes in the states shifted to no longer include intangible assets, and have been a hot topic the entire time.

            If you’re referring to the President’s Budget plan announced bt Biden early this spring then thats fine. But they didn’t mention it.

  • nexguy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Would they be able to use unrealized losses and just end up paying less in taxes then they do now?

  • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    69
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 hours ago

    I think the real solution is not to lend on fake money. Tax or no tax, it wasn’t taxes that caused the market crash in 2008.

  • Coreidan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    7 hours ago

    But that means rich people will be slightly less rich. That will never happen.

  • The Snark Urge@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Ugh. It would be so much simpler to…

    … Remember those memes about what you could build with a single pandemic stimulus check? From home depot?

    • Allonzee@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      10 hours ago

      I don’t know man, I don’t really think building millions of birdhouses will accomplish much.

      /s 😉

    • eskimofry@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 hours ago

      You’re not on the level of wealth this thread is about so you have nothing to worry about. Besides, your income is already taxed and in some countries it is deducted by the employer before you ever see your salary.