> But property taxes aren't a tax on capital gains
This is getting tautological though. The point of the ProPublica piece (generously read) is that there’s no reason we have to tax capital gains — or more to the point, wealth broadly — the way we do. And that the article isn’t “wrong” (as the link for this HN post seems to suggest) just because it seems to suggest that reality should perhaps be changed.
Overall you seem to be reading my post as an argument to literally replace capital gains tax with property tax. That’s not the point, the point is there is precedent for taxing assets that have not sold. Issues like how to handle falling asset values under a wealth tax or how a wealth tax would intersect with any remaining capital gains tax would be policy mechanics subject to robust debate IF a decision was made to do a wealth tax.
Update - oh hi Seth we met when you were at Berkeley and made a stand on the loyalty oath. Fan.
This is getting tautological though. The point of the ProPublica piece (generously read) is that there’s no reason we have to tax capital gains — or more to the point, wealth broadly — the way we do. And that the article isn’t “wrong” (as the link for this HN post seems to suggest) just because it seems to suggest that reality should perhaps be changed.
Overall you seem to be reading my post as an argument to literally replace capital gains tax with property tax. That’s not the point, the point is there is precedent for taxing assets that have not sold. Issues like how to handle falling asset values under a wealth tax or how a wealth tax would intersect with any remaining capital gains tax would be policy mechanics subject to robust debate IF a decision was made to do a wealth tax.
Update - oh hi Seth we met when you were at Berkeley and made a stand on the loyalty oath. Fan.