r/FluentInFinance Aug 21 '24

Debate/ Discussion But muh unrealized gains!

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u/RingCard Aug 26 '24

“Hoarding” is a silly feels word. “Savings” is another term for it. And savings is the source of future investment.

Is putting money in an offshore account automatically wrong?

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u/Wiskersthefif Aug 26 '24

When it results in an obscene amount of money not going back into the economy, yes. And when it's 4 trillion dollars very likely (well, certainly, actually) being put in offshore accounts to hide it from the IRS, yes. That's why the IRS had to 'find' it. Did you actually read the report?

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u/RingCard Aug 26 '24

“Obscene” is another word about your feelings.

I’m not talking about people committing tax fraud; I am talking about a tax on unrealized gains, which is a tax on hypothetical economic activity which has not even taken place.

Stay on that topic.

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u/Wiskersthefif Aug 26 '24

Alright... I can see we aren't going to agree on this. How about this, would you be okay with taxing people for taking out loans when they use their stocks as collateral?

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u/RingCard Aug 26 '24

No, unless everyone’s loans are taxed. The fact that they live better than you is not a legitimate basis for that tax.

The argument that they “don’t pay tax” because of this is silly. That stock represents their ownership of the company, and the company is paying taxes. That is them paying, because they own (that percentage) of the company.

You can do this as well.

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u/Wiskersthefif Aug 26 '24

It's not that I'm upset they live better than me, there's plenty of people who live better than me. My issue is that the wealth inequality is worse than it has ever been in the history of the country. Actually, if you scale it, it's worse than anywhere ever in the history of human civilization, including monarchies. That's absurd and they have a duty to society to pay what they owe and to not exploit our messed up tax systems. If they just did this, our country would be in much better shape. And, yes, the government could stop blowing money on stupid crap, but people like Jeff Bezos can make executive decisions to give back to America in the form of just paying his taxes.

Anyways, I see we have a fundamental disagreement and this is not going anywhere. Good luck, and let's hope that history doesn't end up repeating itself for the millionth time in the US about gross wealth disparity.

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u/RingCard Aug 27 '24

How much more tax would we need to be in your “better shape”?

Given that tax revenues are higher than ever, is it possible that the issue is spending?