Dakota Beacon

Kamala Harris has proposed perhaps the worst possible idea - and coming from her, that is definitely saying something.  I am referring to her plan to implement taxation of “unrealized capital gains”.  This one idea has the potential to obliterate our already weakened and over-extended economy.  

“Oh, well,” some will say.  “This is ‘capital gains’ tax.  It is going to be the ‘rich’ finally paying their ‘fair share’,” right?  You have heard this.  It is why class warfare is so useful to Democrats.  By setting up teams - the whites and the blacks, the rich and the poor, whatever against whatever else - that Democrats (and let’s face it, a lot of Republicans) encourage the American people, who have a shared interest in our country’s future, to take sides against one another.  If Harris proposes a tax that will affect only the “rich”, why not support that if you’re not one of them, or don’t perceive yourself to be one of them?

This was the thinking back in Woodrow Wilson’s day, too.  No surprise.  One of our worst presidents promoted the income tax.   How did he put this over?  Same way - by using envy and class warfare to persuade idiots that this income tax would make the rich pay their fare share.  It was begun as a tax on only those then making $500,000/year.  Well that’s a lot of money today and in 1913 it was even more - in the neighborhood of $16 million.  How long did it take to bite you?  The point is that when a program is put into effect, the principle is established that it’s okay to do this.  Why stop with multimillionaires when there are so many middle-class wage earners who can be tapped?  Millionaires have always had a small share of the nation’s total wealth.  

What we have spoken of above is just the doctrine of extending a tax burden designed to milk the rich to everyone.  Do you know anyone - even entry-level workers or high school kids working after school jobs who does not have to file an income tax return?  Neither do I.  

This is a matter of principle.  If you decide it’s ethical to steal the wealth earned by the highest-paid earners or any other elite group, how can you argue that they matter less than the rest of the population?  Our laws - at least the ones that work - are intended to be for everyone, not just the poor, not just the rich, not just minorities - everyone.  It is called “equal protection”, and we have seen the consequences all too often when we allow this principle to be broken.

With regard to the effects of such a tax on “unrealized capital gains”, just who do you think will determine the monetary value of properties?  You?  Don’t be silly.  It will be some assessor employed by the people who want to grab your wealth.  

The devastating effect on our economy can only be imagined in a nightmare.  Will young adults be buying homes?  Why?  If they do, they will be risking losing everything they earn.  We are all aware that houses have gone up over the years.  It is one reason that they have been seen as a good investment.  When one buys a house he has some incentive to maintain it and even perhaps improve it in the interest of raising its value, either for rental or eventual sale.  When the house is sold, if it has appreciated in value (which would be normal) the capital gains are taxed.  Until then there is no basis on which to tax other than property taxes (which are also immoral).  But if we permit our government to tax unrealized capital gains, our investment is in immediate peril.  Take the case of an elderly couple, retired, who took pride in paying off their family home so they could enjoy their later years in the security of having a roof over their heads.  Perhaps they bought this house in l1970 and raised their family in it.  Now they have significantly reduced income, perhaps significantly increased health care costs, all in addition to soaring inflation.  If your parents bought a house in 1970 for $68,000 - a modest home, to be sure - today it would be worth over $535K.  Now imagine getting a tax bill for this while you are living in it as a retiree.  Even if you build in some leeway for old age, it will still result most likely in the owner losing the home.  Where will he go?  Some people decide to “downsize” when they retire, but others see their family home as a place where they can bring the family together and maintain the cherished family connections.  Thanksgiving won’t be the same in some government-subsidized project with a studio apartment.  

This prospect should be enough to chill anyone’s plans to invest in a home.  Why bother?  And why should private people invest in income properties?  This has been a mainstay of many retired people, and a godsend to those who need housing.  If we dry up the income properties due to lack of investment in them, or allow them to deteriorate because it is “better” than seeing them go up in value and then losing them, what kind of society will we be creating?  

Home ownership isn’t for everyone, but it has been the most successful pathway to owning a stake in the community and in the country and to safeguarding the wellbeing of our families.  This will be lost, and very quickly.  We will soon see the deterioration of our neighborhoods and the quality of life in America.  But this isn’t the only thing that will suffer.  Who will invest in stocks?  There would be some capital gains there.  If not, why invest?  If it is worth investing in it will produce capital gains.  If we tax these before they are even in hand, how will this tax be paid?  We will see a lot of fire sales in the stock market.  Do we need any more pressure to bring about a crash to put 1929 to shame?  

Our Great Depression, which no one living today lived through, was a legendary disaster.  People lost homes and thereby families.  They went hungry.  Hobos proliferated under the docks at train stations, People lost hope and courage.  A lot of people found that all they could hope to do was let rooms in their homes for rent, raise chickens for eggs, scrounge coal chunks that fell from trains (coal was a chief heating fuel then), sell apples for pennies on the streets, make clothing out of flour sacks.  Young kids left home and went on the road looking for a way to stay alive.  People stopped investing in anything.  Today we have a different picture.  Few people have actual life skills.  They have learned to code, true, but what use will such skills be in a real depression?  We now have regulations which even outlaw kids’ lemonade stands in some places.  Selling apples, coal, eggs and the like on the streets, or going door to door would probably get you arrested and your goods confiscated today.  When the electricity is cut off for lack of payment, the many small ways people have made an extra buck here or there on hobbies will also come to a screeching halt.  

The current administration has already imperiled the U.S. dollar through the foolish and pointless war in Ukraine.  By engaging in this utter nonsense we have pushed RUssia - a successful, burgeoning economy - to tear the world away from our shaky currency and toward a currency underwritten with actual gold.  People have no reason to hang onto the U.S. dollar as a safe currency.  Now it is safer to go to BRICS or even to physical gold or silver.  Profligate and stupid spending has not only undermined our dollar, but this spending has been an investment in war and terrorism.  It hasn’t even been used to make our own country and our own people safer.  

There is no Harris plan that I’ve heard which has to do with ending costly wars or slowing this spending.  In fact, I have not heard ANY candidate other than Robert Kennedy, who has shown the least interest in bringing our spending binge to a halt.  No.  Instead of curbing spending, Harris and Walz have plans to fund their schemes with funds squeezed out of people’s “unrealized capital gains”.  

The people who came to America legally - most of them in the 19th and early 20th centuries, came here for two important reasons:  they wanted the freedom to speak their minds without fear, and they wanted the opportunity to work hard and earn money that would be theirs.  Money to help send their kids to school, to invest in their own businesses, to build schools and businesses, to create more wealth which would be shared through employment.  Some began with a fruit stand on the street and invested their toil and earnings in restaurants or hotels.  Some began as tailors or seamstresses and founded clothing companies.  Some began as small farmers and built their businesses up into implement dealerships to help all farmers get their work done.  This is the story of America.  It is all founded on these two important factors - freedom and opportunity.  And this freedom and this opportunity have made America the great power it became, which could have been a power for good in the world.  Sadly this is being subverted - both the power of America in the world and the values which made America a good place to invest in.  

We are about to lose this if Harris prevails.  She will undoubtedly walk this back until after the election when she finds out that people are not dumb enough to fall in with it.  She is banking that they will, that class warfare, jealousy, envy and smallness will outweigh intelligence, logic, principle and ethics with the American people.  She could be right.  There is always someone who thinks, as Reagan observed, that a fat man standing next to a thin one got fat by taking food away from the skinny guy.  It’s not so.  As John Kennedy reminded us once, a rising tide floats all boats – not just the big ones, but the small ones.  Not just the yachts but the fishing boats, the tow boats, as well.  We all benefit in a culture of plenty.  We all lose in a culture of insufficiency and want.  Want breeds a lot of ills.  It is not necessary.  We do not have a fixed amount of wealth.  We create wealth.  But we can create it only if it is not snatched away from the creators of it.  

Some of us can’t stand Trump.  But we had all better vote for him to keep the Harris plan for stealing your wealth out of office and as far from government as we can get her.  This plan of hers is communism.  Remember Lenin?  “To each according to his need; from each according to his ability.”  Where did that end?  The Soviet Union lasted from 1917 until about 1989.  That’s about 70 years, +/-.  Not a speck in terms of human history.  We have a better system.  Our system has always worked.  Only since we have been subverting it has it slowed.  Klaus Schwab famously predicted, “You will own nothing and you will be happy.”  Well, if you don’t own anything, you will not be free.  Those who came here for the right reasons understood that very well.  If you cannot own your own home you cannot have security.  You will be forever a serf.  

There are many who have formulated ways in which we could actually extricate America from the yoke of income taxes.  One is Ted Cruz.  He understands this dynamic.  Instead of following the unintelligent and illogical path of Kamala Harris/Tim Walz, we should instead be looking to Cruz and other like-minded Americans to restore our freedom and our economy.