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Merged Economics, politics and the election

TragicMonkey said:
A hybrid, obviously, taking the best elements of each theoretical economic system. And adjusting things practically as we go, not insisting we lay down principles that cannot be deviated from no matter what the actual real-world effects are.
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This.

Basically "Stop Bobbing economics"
 
acbytesla said:
Not really. Paying a Capital gains tax isn't what I meant.
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That's not what I meant either. I sell stock every year. I pay income tax on the revenue from the sale, every year.

So what did you mean?

And what's wrong with capital gains tax? Isn't taxing literal capitalists for doing literal capitalism the ideal?
 
A Tobin tax might help reduce the impact of speculation and glhigh frequency trades. Of it was set at say 0.5% it would mean that algorithms would only trade when that 0m5% threshold was met. So multiple trades a second for fractions of a percentage profit would become costly.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
The free market isn't a solution either, because all free markets do is devolve to monopolies.
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Not always. But that is kind of my point. Is free markets stop being free when competition declines. Business people call competitive free markets "destructive capitalism." When competition drives down profits.

I worked for a company called ADIC in the 1990s. We were a smaller but profitable player in the tape back up market. Quantum was the big player in the market. They bought our company. We were told how exciting it was. 6 months after they bought us they closed the company down. Which was always the intent. They didn't want our company. They didn't want competition. No longer a free market. I worked for another tech company where almost the same thing happened. That was a little different because while they didn't close us down, they did increase the prices we sold our products at. It was all about market manipulation.

Markets are truly only free when there is competition. And yet a frequent goal in business is to destroy competition as it has a negative impact on profits.
 
Solitaire said:
Seriously, no one caught it?

A 110 billion dollars extra a year for a $600 increase in the Child Tax Credit, but only a 10 billion extra a year for another increase of $2400 in the CTC. Simply divide the 110 billion by 600 and you get 183.3 million children.

Now you might think that's a lot of children for a country of only 330 million people, but I know of an old lady with eighty eight cats who refers to them as her, "children."
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The current CTC is $2000. The proposed increase is not $600. It would be $1000 per child or $1600 per child under 6. Also in 2026 when the Trump Tax cuts expire it will revert back to its base of $1000 per child. So for that timeframe of the 10 year window add an extra 1k to that number. It also expands the income requirements, including more families. I am not sure why there is such bad faith in how these numbers were arrived at without any research. Just blind faith everything that is not slanted positive is wrong.

I didn't really see mention or pushback to this when Vance proposed increasing the CTC to $5000 per child days ago. Plenty of news articles estimating it's cost in the trillions. If politicians want to fight over how much more money they will give to families with kids, I am not going to complain. Definitely a 'let them fight' situation.
 
theprestige said:
That's not what I meant either. I sell stock every year. I pay income tax on the revenue from the sale, every year.

So what did you mean?

And what's wrong with capital gains tax? Isn't taxing literal capitalists for doing literal capitalism the ideal?
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That's a capital gains tax. And nothing is wrong with it. If you lose money you don't pay anything now do you? In fact, you can deduct those losses from the gains. It's an income tax often at a far lower rate than the average person pays for say salary income. I'm saying you should pay a sales or VAT tax on each stock transaction.
 
acbytesla said:
That's a capital gains tax. And nothing is wrong with it. If you lose money you don't pay anything now do you? In fact, you can deduct those losses from the gains. It's an income tax often at a far lower rate than the average person pays for say salary income. I'm saying you should pay a sales or VAT tax on each stock transaction.
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The brokerage takes a fee for each transaction, and that is their income, which is taxed.

The tax code doesn't leave a lot of things untaxed; the problem is getting people to pay all of what they owe under already-existing tax law, not the absence of tax where it could be applied.
 
acbytesla said:
That's a capital gains tax. And nothing is wrong with it. If you lose money you don't pay anything now do you? In fact, you can deduct those losses from the gains. It's an income tax often at a far lower rate than the average person pays for say salary income. I'm saying you should pay a sales or VAT tax on each stock transaction.
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Tobin Tax
 
TragicMonkey said:
The brokerage takes a fee for each transaction, and that is their income, which is taxed.

The tax code doesn't leave a lot of things untaxed; the problem is getting people to pay all of what they owe under already-existing tax law, not the absence of tax where it could be applied.
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The broker is being taxed. It's not the same. I'm saying every stock, every sale, the person buying or selling a stock should be taxed say 1%. It's a line item.
 
theprestige said:
That's not what I meant either. I sell stock every year. I pay income tax on the revenue from the sale, every year.
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You pay capital gains tax on sale of stock. It's just that that short-term gains are taxed at the same rate as income. Long-term gains are taxes at a significantly lower rate.
 
mumblethrax said:
You pay capital gains tax on sale of stock. It's just that that short-term gains are taxed at the same rate as income. Long-term gains are taxes at a significantly lower rate.
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Capital gains is paid on the gains from stock, not the sale of it. If you didn't make any gains there's nothing to be taxed.

And yes, there's definitely a lower rate for long-term capital gains, and there is a reason for it: to encourage sensible buy-and-hold, long-term investment which is a definite social good for both investor and that which they invest in. Short-term investments are more volatile and should be discouraged. An investor who buys into a mutual fund and holds it for thirty years for their retirement should absolutely be treated differently than a douchebro who speculates on day trading.

In a country that lacks a decent safety net and has looming shortfalls in its partial and mismanaged social security plan we definitely should be doing everything we can to encourage long-term investment by everyone. Everybody who tucks their pennies into sound investments is one less person, hopefully, who'll be a drain on social security down the road.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Capital gains is paid on the gains from stock, not the sale of it. If you didn't make any gains there's nothing to be taxed.

And yes, there's definitely a lower rate for long-term capital gains, and there is a reason for it: to encourage sensible buy-and-hold, long-term investment which is a definite social good for both investor and that which they invest in. Short-term investments are more volatile and should be discouraged. An investor who buys into a mutual fund and holds it for thirty years for their retirement should absolutely be treated differently than a douchebro who speculates on day trading.

In a country that lacks a decent safety net and has looming shortfalls in its partial and mismanaged social security plan we definitely should be doing everything we can to encourage long-term investment by everyone. Everybody who tucks their pennies into sound investments is one less person, hopefully, who'll be a drain on social security down the road.
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It's also a way to shield income from taxes. The wealthy only pay capital gains taxes the year the stock is sold. You can make 10 percent every year and then only pay taxes the year that it's sold. And let's not even get into the reality of how that income is shielded when is part of an inheritance.
 
You see this is what I'm talking about when I say "economy" is too broad a word.

One person: "But you can see by this chart here the taxes on capital gains tax is down .0001%"

Other person: "I have to decide between medicine I need to stay alive and rent."

These are not the same thing in all but the loosest and most meaningless of terms.

"But the stock marking is doing great!" and "The functional day to day economic lives of most Americans are doing great" aren't the same thing.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You see this is what I'm talking about when I say "economy" is too broad a word.

One person: "But you can see by this chart here the taxes on capital gains tax is down .0001%"

Other person: "I have to decide between medicine I need to stay alive and rent."

These are not the same thing in all but the loosest and most meaningless of terms.

"But the stock marking is doing great!" and "The functional day to day economic lives of most Americans are doing great" aren't the same thing.
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Exactly. The stock market is a terrible barometer to general economic conditions.
 
Also literally every economic system basically gets to:

"Okay we've crafted the perfect, flawless economic system. The literal only thing that can break it is someone getting greedy. Or someone panicking. Or someone getting greedy because they think someone else is going to panic. Or someone panicking because they think someone else is going to get greedy. But as long as that doesn't happen we're golden."

and then stops.
 
acbytesla said:
It's also a way to shield income from taxes. The wealthy only pay capital gains taxes the year the stock is sold. You can make 10 percent every year and then only pay taxes the year that it's sold.
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Nonsense. You pay capital gains tax when the potential gain is made real, at the sale of the stock. Nobody "makes" 10 percent every year in revenue from unsold stock.
 
acbytesla said:
Exactly. The stock market is a terrible barometer to general economic conditions.
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Even measures like the total size of the economy aren't good indicators when wealth and income inequality is high - and increasing.

If the economy grows by £10 and the top n% take £15 of that growth the 100-n% are splitting a smaller stake. :mad:

Whilst it can be argued that Democrats aren't doing enough to reverse the inequality, President Trump - the champion of the underclasses :rolleyes: - wants to exacerbate it.
 
acbytesla said:
You can make 10 percent every year and then only pay taxes the year that it's sold.
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No, you can't. It's not income until it comes in. I have an electronic piece of paper saying I own a thing that's currently worth $X if I sold it right now. I don't sell it. I don't receive $X. I have no income from this. I haven't made anything.

When I do sell it, I'll pay capital gains tax on the difference between what I bought it for and what I sold it for. Some have proposed taxing capital gains as regular income: okay, so suppose that's being done...it's still not going to be income until it's realized.

If you think taxes should be higher, or collected better, that's one thing. Wanting to tax income that hasn't occurred is quite another.

It's also a way to shield income from taxes. The wealthy only pay capital gains taxes the year the stock is sold.
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Everybody pays capital gains taxes the year the asset is sold. Do you really think only "the wealthy" have any investments? Half of America does, through 401k plans. The middlest of middle classes! The wealthy have more money invested, of course, but the tax is the same no matter how much money it is.

And let's not even get into the reality of how that income is shielded when is part of an inheritance.
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Even inherited shares are taxed when the gains are realized.

Look, hate "the rich" all you like, but you need to understand how things work before you reform them. Taxing capital gains as regular income is infinitely more sensible than your suggestions of taxing unrealized gains and flat taxing transactions -- and would bring in lots more money than your suggestions would. That's why it's so controversial: it's a proposal that could actually work, and would be a huge bite from the wealthy while not regressively hurting the middle class as much.
 
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