Slow Learner

Ed chimes back in, but he really shouldn’t have. Let’s jump right in:

When I said “capitalist” , I meant it as “someone who gets all of their income from capital”, as opposed to “earning” it via their labor (and paying Social Security & medicare, AND taxes on it).

No class warfare there, Ed! “Gets” versus “earning” isn’t stacked or biased at all. My bad. Or not.

The topic in question was:
“cutting taxes on capital gains, and increasing the tax deduction for investment losses” ( emphasis on the CUTTING and INCREASING, i.e. changing the status quo, which IMHO is already stacked very much in favor of the “capitalist”, and against the wage earner )

Biased, indeed. That investor, who has already paid full taxes on his income, is taxed again on his investments — and is effectively taxed on his losses, too. “Sock it to the rich” at least has the vigor of intellectual honesty.

Now, a person who earns their living exculsively from employing their capital instead of their labor ( a “capitalist”) , now pays ZERO for Social Security and Medicare and reduced tax rates on those capital gains held over a year.

Not that I want to take money from your pocket (this is purely an academic exercise), but how exactly is this fair to “Joe Sixpack” who pays Social Security and full taxes on 100% of his income, and how is this NOT a huge giveaway to the 1% that holds something like 90% of the capital.

A giveaway? Hardly. I’ve avoided SocSec taxes whenever I legally could. As a result, I’ll be paid far less in benefits than Ed will be. Yet, somehow, that’s a giveaway from Ed, to me. Meantime, rest assured that I am by no means qualified to receive Medicaid benefits, even though I spent several years paying into the program. At least with SocSec, I’ll get some small return (about 2%) on my investment, 30 years from now. The money I paid Medicaid might well have been flushed.

And yet, Ed still insists he’s the one giving me money.

Oh, and the top 1% hold nothing like 90% of the “capital.” The top 10% earns something like half of all income, last I recall, which Ed confuses with capital. Capital isn’t just your cash and securities, it’s also your car, your house, and your widget factory.

But let’s not bother with facts, right?