[cletus]

I didn't see this mentioned: when interest rates are at or near zero the tax burden on the rich almost entirely disappears. Why? Because you can borrow money for essentially nothing instead of realizing a gain or repatriating money from tax free havens.

It has a name too: buy, borrow, die.

Why die? Because beneficiaries inherit many things at a stepped up basis. Example: you buy a house in 1985 for $100,000. Now it's $3 million. If you sold it, you'd pay capital gains on $2.9 million. If your children inherit it, the cost basis gets reset to $3 million.

Why we're giving such massive tax breaks to the wealthy is beyond me. Actually what's really beyond me is why so many poor and middle class people are willing to defend such a practice.

As for QE, it's meant to benefit the government too. Why? Because inflation wipes out national debt. There'll be a point in the future where the $30T debt we have now (or whatever it is) just won't seem like that much money.

Thing is, none of the predictions about QE and inflation have come true, at least not yet. This is interesting and possibly concerning.

[sokoloff]

Adjustment: You would typically pay capital gains on only around $2M of that. You’d likely qualify for the $250K per person exclusion on a primary residence and have several hundred thousand dollars of capital improvements that you’d made over that 35 year period.

[poulsbohemian]

Thank you for saying this! As a Realtor, I am constantly talking with people who are scared to sell a house because they are so sure they are going to be taxed to death, all while completely ignoring the big wad of cash that they will receive when they sell. People have an absolutely irrational fear of taxes to the point they do crazy things. Yes, I'm sure there are markets where if someone has lived in a house for decades they might have to be vaguely aware of capital gains, but in my market, practically speaking, nobody is lucky enough to have this as a problem.

[mywittyname]

> People have an absolutely irrational fear of taxes to the point they do crazy things.

I've always wondered how/why otherwise smart people fall into this trap. There are calculators out there for anything and everything tax-related under the sun. See also: I don't want a raise because then I'll go up a tax bracket and make less money!

Then again, there are people who won't get married due to (legitimate) increased tax burden. There are also people who run otherwise successful businesses into the ground specifically to avoid paying taxes. I think some people are just really, really adverse to the idea of paying taxes. Like the idea hits them at some core, fundamental level.

[blitzar]

Financial engineering and planning is great.

> none of the predictions about QE and inflation have come true, at least not yet

Depends on what counts as inflation. If we exclude stocks, house prices and food, not much inflation.

[reincarnate0x14]

It's pretty funny, in a cosmic sense, that when you have enough money, states will loan you money at negative interest. The amount of effectively zombie business entities that have persisted due to this is probably staggering and it's clearly been letting them devour competition.

[imtringued]

Devour competition by offering higher wages? It doesn't sound like something that has been happening for the last 10 years.

[r00fus]

> Why we're giving such massive tax breaks to the wealthy is beyond me.

Is this not obvious? In a mostly unregulated capitalist economy, wealthy have the keys to the kingdom.