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Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

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Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#401

Post by waihtis »

Muromec wrote: post #370
waihtis wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're literally plotting policies of "wealth redistribution" in the EU at least. The idiot bureaucrats can call it what they want, but forcibly redistributing your assets more and more to other people makes it thievery.

The longer people will call it communist plot and insist on not paying taxes, the higher is the probability of having the actual communist plot and being exiled to the Moon by a popular vote.

Revealed preference at play again, and everyone knows that whats the whole communist thing really is about anyway - crippling jealousy and wishing to kill off the people who've put more effort in their life than you.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#402

Post by Propelloni »

valval wrote: post #394
Propelloni wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Supporting the war in Ukraine is just another example of “bombing brown people”, yet you appear completely oblivious. How? Russia invades the Ukraine. Ukraine defends itself. Ukraine's allies, incl. the USA, send weapons. None of the allies, incl. the USA, fight in Ukraine or Russia. I'm afraid your independent thinking has formed a prejudiced opinion. George Carlin would not be proud.

Of course this time around we have to do the bombing through some middlemen because the brown people have big guns too, and the people aren’t actually brown this time around. They do speak a weird language though and have different cultural values, so maybe that qualifies. Ukraine isn’t our ally. That’s a silly sentiment. Ukraine is a developing country wholly comparable to say Zambia or Namibia. Our interests just h…

> Ukraine isn’t our ally. That’s a silly sentiment.

You know what, I agree.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#403

Post by pnut »

photonthug wrote: post #159
gruez wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s buying politicians and distorting society so they pay less. If you had the time and resources, wouldn't you try to affect change in government? It's not fundamentally any different than showing up to your city council meeting to get housing developments approved/blocked, for instance. Moreover, most people don't think of themselves as bad people, so they probably legitimately think they're doing the Right Thin…

> If you had the time and resources, wouldn't you try to affect change in government? This is going to be hard for the politically inclined to understand, but no, it's simply not the case that everyone everywhere is preoccupied with finding/creating legal ways to push their will/preferences onto other people.

That choice does come with the consequence of having to abide by the agendas of people who are trying to push their will onto other people though.

It's only a viable option if you trust your political system to function when your back is turned.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#404

Post by w4 »

zkelvin wrote: post #113
xmprt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be unpopular but I think there are ways that taxing unrealized capital gains could work without being super radical. 1. Allow unrealized losses to be deducted. 2. Once a certain percentage of the gain is taxed, step up the cost basis by the amount of tax paid. That way you avoid double taxation (once under the unrealized value and again when the asset is sold). 3. (optional) Keep the tax rate on unrealized…

Taxing unrealized capital gains already isn't all that radical -- property tax is effectively a tax on unrealized gains of property value, and essentially every municipality has that tax.

In addition to what everyone has already said, property taxes paid are also very explicitly deductible from income taxes. They’re more like an indirect transfer from the Federal government to municipalities, and don’t necessarily result in a substantial aggregate increase in tax burdens.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#405

Post by gen220 »

brigadier132 wrote: post #263
gen220 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite. Of every dollar you contributed to your 401k last paycheck, how many cents of them do you think you’ll actually spend in retirement, on a risk-adjusted basis? For me, the answer is certainly not 100 and not 0, let’s say it’s 80 cents. Speaking for myself, I think that marginal 20 cents is by definition hoarding because the marginal utility of money to me at that point is negligible. Sure it could benefit m…

It's not about personally using the money or marginal utility. By investing the money in the stock market, you are increasing the pool of money that is going into funding businesses (directly and indirectly). Think of it this way: Angel investors and venture capitalists are directly funding the creation of new productive businesses with the expectation of a future return / reward. This future reward is only possible…

I’d argue it’s still about marginal utility, but you’re talking about second order marginal utility. That is, by increasing the amount of wealth that’s locked up in equities, you’re “funding progress”.

I would still posit that the second order marginal utility of those 20 cents is higher in hands of somebody who needs it. In the same way you talk about how that 20 cents impacts the derivative of “progress”, think about how those 20 cents would impact the derivative of the people it’s redistributed to.

It’s my opinion that there’s no better ROI than investment in early childhood education, for example. Because it’s an investment that pays compounding dividends integrated over an entire human lifetime.

And again, we’re not talking about removing the whole dollar from the market, just 20 cents. An amount, by the way, that is around what would be taxed if you were investing in a non-tax-advantaged account. There’s some irony in there.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#406

Post by yccs27 »

tqi wrote: post #316
yccs27 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn‘t this a false dichotomy? Removing the cost basis step-up doesn‘t automatically mean any taxes are due on the inheitance - you could just keep the low cost basis and pay the tax once you actually realize your gains.

Don't you need money to pay the estate tax?

Oh, good point. For that, you could allow people to pay off estate taxes over multiple years, if the tax is higher than the available liquid assets.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#407

Post by morbicer »

valval wrote: post #397
Muromec wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The longer people will call it communist plot and insist on not paying taxes, the higher is the probability of having the actual communist plot and being exiled to the Moon by a popular vote.

It’s a shame it seems to come to that about once every hundred years. We’ve won the war against the communists before though, and we’ll do it again.

Maybe if we don't strip poor people of any chance of getting out of poverty they won't turn to communism. If you chase an animal in the corner, it will fight back. You can shoot it and win but don't be surprised if the situation repeats.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#408

Post by dxdm »

valval wrote: post #396
T4iga wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fulfilling your obligation to a society that brought you riches, however much risk you took and however much hard work vs luck that was, is not theft. Fueling that society, so that it can persist for your well-being is your obligation as a citizen. If you fully play out your argument, the least wealthy and least successful deserve it the most to have their remaining wealth taken because they are not assuming any risk…

The line of thinking we’re trying to get across to you here is best put like this I find; even if 99% of the village thinks it’s a good idea to march into the most productive individual’s house and rob it clean, it doesn’t become morally right to do so.

> 99% of the village thinks it’s a good idea to march into the most productive individual’s house and rob it clean

If this is what you believe raising taxes is like, I'm not surprised you're against it. But no wonder that you're struggling to get this point across, because it's outlandish in how far removed it is from what I perceive the instrument of taxation to be from concept to application to its morality... Forgive me for my own overblown comparison, but yours is a position I'd expect to hear in a comic from Scrooge McDuck.

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#409

Post by LinuxBender »

TrackerFF wrote: post #85

It always puzzled me how tax-adverse some wealthy people are. I'm not talking about the wealthy people that have 100% of their wealth tied up to company (stock) that they operate - but the wealthy people that are just asset-rich, with zero operational duties. Their wealth is handled by wealth managers, they probably don't even know what they own. But minimizing taxes and hoarding wealth is priority number 1.

I don't know if this video will display for everyone as someone tagged it as private though I can see it not being logged in. I think David Mitchell has the best take on tax avoidance vs evasion. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc8epam4NyY [video][3 mins]

David Mitchell on Tax Avoidance from The Last Leg

Re: Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained

#410

Post by chung8123 »

pmichaud wrote: post #74
bhauer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The step-up in cost basis on death is the original sin that underpins the entire debate over unrealized gains. It's disheartening to see so much thought and deliberation going into an obviously toxic idea (taxing unrealized gains) when the obvious solution (removing the cost basis step-up when assets change hands) is being ignored. Inherited wealth is the least earned, so it should be politically palatable to change…

Maybe there's just no good solution here, but I think the original inspiration for this sort of law was about family homes. It's one thing to inherit stocks and have to sell some of them off, but it's much more complex to try to pass down a property that can't be arbitrarily subdivided. There are various options obviously, but I think enough people had to sell their beloved childhood home because of the tax obligatio…

I think it was more about family businesses where the family would have to sell the business just to pay the taxes on it. Farms are also this way.
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