Real Clear

121. Harris Tax Plan Vs. Orange Man

Lucas A. Klein, Ph.D. Episode 121

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Can taxing unrealized capital gains spell disaster for our economy?  We'll dive into the realm of political extremism, contrasting public perceptions of Donald Trump with Kamala Harris's extreme tax proposals. Harris's plan to tax unrealized capital gains for those with over $100 million in wealth is a heist.  This episode challenges you to weigh which form of extremism poses a more significant threat to our economic stability.

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Speaker 1:

Hi everybody. I'm coming to you on Thursday, august 29th 2024. Just got out of the cold plunge. I've determined for myself I cannot start my day without cold plunges. I think as I age, I need something other than coffee that gets me excited about existence. So I had an economical way of doing cold plunge. There's all of these cold plunge units around that are being sold because Joe Rogan made plunging really popular, and they're like $4,000 for some fancy cooled system that is 35 degrees all day long. By the way, that's way too cold, and what I did is I just bought a feed tank an animal feed tank that was my size, for about a hundred bucks, and then I bought an ice maker for somewhere under $300 and linked it up to one of my water lines you can buy the adapters on Amazon and it just makes ice and I take the ice and dump it in the water and I get it to around 50 degrees. That's where I like it.

Speaker 1:

I think the people who are doing plunging down in the low 40s and even in the 30s, like Rogan does, are insane. I think you're at risk for a stroke or a heart attack if you do that, and certainly if you plunge your head below those levels, then you're going to be at increased risk for some serious medical issues. So just be careful when you're doing these things. But from my perspective, doing plunging on a daily basis is vital to my life, as I'm a little bit hopped up on dopamine coming to you and every time I get out of the cold plunge I think about something that I need to talk about. What is that? Today, I started to think about. Perhaps as I was emerging from extreme temperature, I started to wonder about the concept of extreme, and what we hear all day long is that orange man extreme, orange man bad, and in some ways the orange man is bad and in some ways the orange man is extreme, but to the degree that should matter to you, you might also want to think about how the alternative is extreme.

Speaker 1:

So here's Kamala Harris's plan to tax unrealized capital gains. She is going to continue Biden's tax plan to not tax anyone additionally over $400,000 a year. Now pause for a second. Why is $400,000 the line? Why was it $700,000 a few years ago and now it's $400,000. At $399,000, you shouldn't get taxed anything more, but at $401,000, you should be taxed. At now 39.6% proposed top tax rate. Does that make sense to you. The arbitrariness of these lines is really curious, and it gets lower and lower by the way. Back in 2019, she proposed a 4% income-based premium on households making over $100,000 to pay for Medicare for all. So here's me thinking about the concept of radical. That's $4,000 out of a $100,000 household taken to pay for Medicare for all, which is all. Medicare is already insolvent, already can't pay for itself.

Speaker 1:

Now the scariest thing that Harris has proposed is a tax on unrealized capital gains for anyone with a wealth greater than $100 million.

Speaker 1:

Now everyone's thinking to themselves perhaps most people are super wealthy. Now everyone's thinking to themselves. Perhaps those people are super wealthy. This is called the billionaire tax.

Speaker 1:

This is an absolutely terrifying initiative the moment that you tax the people who are the most efficient investors of money and that's what the wealthy are. They have more money because they are more efficient at investing that money than you or I. That's why they're wealthy. In fact, there's a very persuasive line of thinking, which is that it's great to have more money in the hands of the wealthy because they're better investors of money. Obviously, we don't want an incredible wealth gap, which has been transpiring in the West for a long time, but we also don't want to eradicate the most efficient investors.

Speaker 1:

The moment that you tax unrealized capital gains, you will destroy the US economy Full stop. Okay, and from here you can listen to the full episode if you go to realclearpodcastcom or click the link in the show notes below. It's only $4.99 a month, or if you buy an annual membership, you get a pretty big discount, so I recommend it. You'll get access to everything that I'm doing all episodes, uninterrupted essays and Sunday news releases. It's well worth it, and turn other people on to realclearpodcastcom with Lucas Klein.