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Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

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Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your point is undercut by the fact the vast majority of middle class workers do invest and benefit from long term capital gains taxes. Around 40% of stocks are in retirement accounts.

Around 50% of the entire market cap of the NASDAQ is owned by the top 1%. Tax it.

also tax their other assets...

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the risk of not being able to diversify your portfolio and putting all dependency on one income source. How do layoffs, broken health/major sickness, automation, local downturns get compensated by reducing future taxes? If I'm laid off for a year, then find a new job, I still pay the full tax amount on my income from that point forward, no 'loss deduction' from a year being unemployed. If I get sick with canc…

I agree with you that it is unfair that people with variable income pay more taxes than people with steady income even if average income is the same. I’m a poster child for people disadvantaged in this way. That said, I do recognize that mitigating this is really hard without introducing even more complexity to the tax code, which has its own cost. Wages have no risk when you receive them. It is cash on the barrel. T…

The point wasn't to suggest doing that.

It was to point out, that giving asset sales an insurance break, or risk break, would only makes sense if we gave working people gapped-income and risk breaks.

Which is to say, that neither makes sense.

The way I would put it is, money inflates if you simply hold it, but it has time value almost always greater than inflation. If you don't at least do that, you are choosing to waste value.

So giving a tax break for inflation would be giving people a break on losses, that capitalism already accounts for. Such as naturally higher interest rates when inflation is higher.

(Yes return on asset balancing mechanisms are not perfect in time, but as noted, neither is employment.)

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the greed of billionaires is the governments’ fault?

Everybody's greedy, Malcolm. It's why markets function.

Many find balance and know when enough is enough. I hope you find that too some day, Walter.
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