So tell me, what ideas do you have that actually work?

Yes obviously there are no problems going on in the country why if I got to CNN money they’ll tell me how everything is milk and ambroisia, wait what’s this…we’re in a recession? Possible stagflation? Comparisons to 1929? Rising debt? Unemployment rising? But low taxes, they were supposed to make our economy super powered and generate enough revenues to lower the deficit. Low capital gains was supposed to generate massive job growth through corporate growth. Food Crisis? Oil Rising? Financials suffering huge losses? But this wasn’t supposed to happen. Where is the massie GDP growth Dos? where is it?

Its the small investor who doesn’t think they can make it big who should be the one catered to, we make our revenues off the large ones and incentivize the small ones, so they’ll get bigger and eventually be among the group generating the revenues

Sorry but you have to convince me that people won’t invest under that method, in fact i’m pretty sure overall investment would be higher since any small loss in the rich would be offset by much higher investment by small investors

Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

Great point Aviash. I have often thought that a solution to CEO’s making poor business decisions for short-term bumps in stock prices (such a significantly downsizing or liquidations) is to decrease the economic incentive to hold their stock options. What we need to do is to make sure that CEO’s are worse off if they choose to hold their stocks for the purposes of making them qualified-dividends. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Someone should put you charge.

No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

Your befuddled Stanley because somewhere along this thread, Aviash realized that his brilliant tinkering with the economy and redistribution of income may actually have an **effect** on what people do, so instead of giving up his grand plan — he choses now to try to target the impact to try to fix the problem. You know, just get the bad guy. He can do this, of course, because he has first-hand knowledge of the financials of each company and knows exactly how increased cap gains rates will effect their investors, their balance sheets, their cash flows and everything else.

All hail Aviash!!

I believe that there should be an initial tax on all income, whetehr it is taken as cash or as option or whatever, and then profits on investemtns should have a certain amount tax free, this way you would close the loophole and incentiivize greater investment

Your idea that in order to fund these high risk ventures we need to have the low capital gains is ridiculous, especially since many people use the low capital gains tax to avoid the income tax in the first place, liek by taking stock options and holding them for over a year.

No what we should do is have an initial tax whether it is coporate stocks, normal income etc. all should be taxed at the same rate initially, then any profits made on investments after that intial tax is tax free up to a certain level, at which point it becomes taxed as well

mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

That is an interesting definition of regressive.

drop it only once in a while to get that short term boost and then raise it back up

You’re such a trickster. Way to work for Americans!

If you think that a hike in cap gains won’t mean a decrease in capital investment (even with your little game) you are wrong. You will see a decrease in long-term capital expansion by some business sectors. That will result in fewer jobs and a general stunting of the economy.

Look, I work in the renewable energy industry. These companies, even with the grotesque amount of subsidization that they are receiving now and in the future, require considerable equity investment. They are often high risk, speculative investments — if you up the capital gains it will effect the analytic matrix of investors, particularly big ones. WHY would you want to make it less attractive for people to investment in high-risk companies that create jobs among many other things good for society? Not every company is blue-chip. It is the companies in the margins that will be most effected by a cap gains hike — and these are the companies with the most to promise in terms of technological innovation and are the highest risk.

Wrong not in the long term if the only thing changed is the capital gains tax, you can read it right there, it has a small macroeconomic effect. Also economic growth’s biggest engine is consumption 2/3 of GDP, not investments.

Oh I agree Obama wasn’t as ready for the question as he could have been, however Obama was acting off of the belief that the moderators were being honest, which wthey were not

I guess this is where one really needs the audacity to hope that it will generate additional revenues, since there is no evidence of that and you raising Capital Gains in the face of evidence that it will slow the economy.

Got it.

mw, the capital gains tax is currently regressive, as it favors the rich since its lower than the income tax.

since most capital gains tax is in effect double taxation (most of the capital that was invested was initially earned and already taxed.) So it’s apples to oranges to compare the rates at which capital gains are taxed to the rates at which income is taxed, since the capital gains is an additional layer of taxation.

What does the CBO say about growth of economy or job growth? Both intuitively and from what I’ve read, these two things do fare better under a lower capital gains tax in the longer run as well as the shorter run. And certainly it’s intuitive that it would be harmful to our global competitiveness to have our rates go back to levels that are much higher than just about every other country, in a time where recession and joblessness and job outsourcing already loom large.

And a final point: to whatever degree you are correct about adjusting the changes for the parts that occur in response to the change, why didn’t Obama say that? As mw pointed out, he was making the argument that it didn’t matter if revenue went down, as long as the higher rate seemed more ‘fair’.