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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Let's say you own your home and it increased in value last year. Do you feel like you "made" any money from that? Unless you sold it, probably not.

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Only because I live it in and can't easily sell it to raise cash.

Let's say you own some stock and it increased in value last year. Do you feel like you "made" any money from that? I did and it did and I do.

Stock is easier to sell, yes, but it's still just a gain on paper until you actually sell it. Otherwise, those gains could be lost next year. Or tomorrow.

Now this is just disingenuous. As if the net worth of Jeff Bezos and the rest of the Epstein class was somehow threatened by market fluctuations or some high-risk investments.

As long as the economy continues to grow, these people will thrive. All while avoiding to pay their share for society.

I have no doubt his investments are well-diversified. He's not an idiot.

My point was simply that income and wealth are two different things, at least for tax purposes.

This is well known. The question is whether they should be. It's not some immutable law of nature, it's a deliberate policy choice to tax returns on capital differently from returns on labor.

I don't think it's all that well understood. People see a headline that Bezos "made" $X billion last year, when that was the increase in his net worth, not that he actually was paid $X billion in cash income. Then they complain that he didn't pay taxes on any of that.

Whether or not we should have a wealth tax and at what level that should apply is an entirely separate issue. I'm quite sure Bezos pays all the taxes he's legally obligated to pay.

Few people think the ultra rich are illegally evading taxes. The issue is exactly that they’re paying all they’re obligated to, and it’s not very much, relatively.

You’re really strawmanning here. Instead of arguing as if we’re morons who don’t know that unrealized gains aren’t taxed and think Bezos is committing tax evasion, convince us of why it’s wrong to think that Bezos should be legally obligated yo pay more, maybe by taxing those unrealized gains.

False equivalence. You're comparing liquid assets with an illiquid one here.

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