Reply #85: Right On!

[dcfirefighter]

Good Post.

Caution on Capital Gains: Some capital gains are EARNED. For instance, a person who owns a company that develops the goodwill of it's customers will be worth more than an otherwise similar company without goodwill. Most capital gains aren't though. In an ideal world, those capital gains would be taxed at the item that actually gained in value: a land title, an extraction right, a broadcast license, etc.

Generally, a high capital gains tax means that companies must pay their (earned & unearned) gains as dividends rather than reinvest them. Ideally (again) if the gains are taxed at the point of gain, only the earned gains could be kept by the company, which could then choose to reinvest them (for a gain in share price) or divest them as dividends.

In the extreme form of rent-sharing, all those things that gain in value due to society are taxed annually. To exclude others an 'owner' would have to pay annual (or every 5 years, or whatever period you choose) 'dues' to the public and any of this revenue above the minimum needed to provide public goods would be shared as a Citizen's Dividend. In the US, Alaska does this with its Permanent Fund, derived from Oil extraction leases.