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Why would capital gains be taxed in the first place? It's simply double taxation on the income

I always ask myself, "What was a government service necessary in order to obtain this money?" Since there are no capital gains without all manners of law enforcement, the answer is yes here. A capital gain is not a tax on the original income. It's a tax on the capital gain, which would be impossible without the rest of us.

Capital gains do depend on participants of the market and economy in general. But each and every one of them has already been taxed. I simply stating the obvious that money should be taxed exactly once, not so many times.

> I simply stating the obvious that money should be taxed exactly once, not so many times.

Why is that obvious? Doesn't a rule like that necessarily create distortions in who gets all the benefits of civilization? For example, in only income is taxed, but not gains on investments, doesn't that mean that working people do ALL the work AND pay ALL the taxes, while people who are rich enough not to work literally do NO work and pay NO taxes?

People like you don't realize that economics involves living, breathing humans.

Also, most of my capital gains are due to inflation and not an increase in value.

Then you really need to pick better investments. Say, any broad market index fund.

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