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Comment by ObserverNeutral | Hacker News Reader

The brains of Americans are not some sort of detached entity disconnected from the rest of the world.

People have hated rich people since the dawn of time, America is no different .

US tax rate is getting more and more in line with Europe, and why wouldn't that be?

Hatred for rich people is something known for centuries now.

Taxes aren't just a way to raise money for federal and local governments, they are also an elegant way which society has to allocate social hatred. You need a corporate tax because people hate corporations, a wealth tax is being discussed and on the horizon because people hate the wealthy, this capital gain tax is on the table because people hate those who make money via capital investment, that's because it's very far removed from doing any work which is perceived as "real work" by the population.

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Come around to every day America. Across the country. The number of people. In the tens of millions. Possibly 100M, who in different and varying ways, don’t want to tax the rich or [big] corporations much differently than the 95/99%.

Similarly, many, many people do not hate the rich in America. I’m not sure what rich amount you’re referring to. Another way of knowing there is no real hatred of the rich in the country is how few people are leftist or further left than that. Any one to the right of progressives who are to the right of the harder leftists, do not uniformly hate rich people or corporations. Maybe the ones they don’t agree with at best.

I’m speaking in generalities and am never saying things are 100% or 0% with any group I bring up. Just largely the case.

It's a lot simpler than that. Biden has this infrastructure project, an admirable idea to be honest, but he needs funding for it. There aren't many ways to get this much money. I'm sure he proposed to print the money, but was told no, and he has proposed to raise corporate taxes, but the rich have objected, so he is left with cap gains tax on the rich and on the middle class. The rich, well, have objected the first idea, so only one option was left, and the middle class can't object. In practice, this tax will create tiered cap gains for the rich and for everyone else. If you put 1 billion into sp500, it will grow at 10% per year as usual, for there are no taxable events for such capital. If you put 1 million, you'll get only 10% minus the 4% tax. Needless to say that 10% and 6% are very different tracks with wildly different outcomes in 30-50 years.

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