People in the US need to hear this. We're selling ourselves out on a massive scale. All the political rhetoric lately about "we have to bust billionaires to pay for our program that has no cost" is a horrible sham. If you can't see it after reading below, your brain is already microwaved and I can't help you. Let me explain.
First it was the $600 bank account inspections. Basically, every tiny bank account in America will be reported continuously to the IRS. Doesn't matter if they change the amount to $10,000... it affects anyone with a bank account, even a part timer. Does that sound like it targets billionaires? No, because their wealth is sheltered all over the world, and certainly not in tiny bank accounts. It is surveillance, and it's leading in the direction of confiscating wealth from the middle class. Will inspecting all these tiny bank accounts increase revenue so we can "build back better"? No, because they have to DOUBLE the size of the IRS to do it. Double! Does that sound like profitable banditry?
Now it's "we're going to tax UNREALIZED capital gains," and thereby "target billionaires." Really? So let's examine what that means. Unrealized means you haven't sold the asset, so you don't have any money from it yet. But they're going to tax you for it. I suppose then you'll be forced to sell the asset to pay the taxes won't you? Do you figure some billionaires might help you out by buying it at firesale prices? I bet some of them would love to help you.
Ok, but what's an example of an unrealized capital gain? Well, your house, your retirement plan, your small business, interest on life insurance, employee options plans, stocks held in an investment account... huh... it sounds like things non-billionaires have, doesn't it?
I bet someone is thinking, "but they'll exempt people's houses!" What if they do? Will they exempt small businesses? Stock portfolios? Baseball cards? Even if they exempted most things, they're still expanding a terrible, draconic precedent. They're asserting "we can tax you on something you don't even have. We can make you sell an asset to cash out our taxes." Think that won't be expanded? Have fun in the coming dark ages if you're that naive.
What about those billionaires?! It will get them too right? Well very likely not, because they have sophisticated tax shelters, and can do their accounting in such a way that their assets never appear to grow in value. They can hire a legion of CPAs and people with PhDs in finance and JDs in Taxation Law. Plus, they have money stashed all over the world, let's be clear about that.
Please note: there are a few more than 600 billionaires in the country. It would be easy to target them if that's what anyone was trying to do. If they said "this only applies to people with over 1 billion in assets" nobody else would be affected. But that's not the plan.
All this is is a cash grab backed up by unprecedented surveillance of individual wealth, targeting the middle class. Just like all the income tax talks, it has nothing to do with billionaires (as if billionaires care about income tax... what #^#@ income?). This time, they've got their eye on the whole bag. If we're stupid enough to let this go because "it targets evil billionaires reee," I think we're done. Seriously, this is the item on the checklist that you know once you mark the box, we're going full Venezuela. And I mean fast.
Politicians, government bureaus, and academics live off of taxes. What they don't eat or spend on their projects, they lend to Fortune 100s and billionaires, or use to guarantee loans for the same. Even the Justice Dept is jumping in, talking about redlining. How does the government lend billionaires billions, and then not understand the mystery that a lot of their loans don't go to people in poor minority neighborhoods? Obviously, they know who they lent the money to, but sure let's investigate the "mystery." Stop falling for this ridiculous diversion!
They're never going to target billionaires, and they see you as a source of revenue. And it's no wonder they don't respect people's intelligence and humanity enough to see them as peers, because all they have to do is say "rich folks" or push any of a number of emotional buttons, and an army of mindless shills jumps in to defend the very people who take food out of their children's mouths, and attack anyone who asks questions.
Take a minute and think about it.
