It is Truth and Reconciliation:

Truth - the past happened and we don’t deny it

Reconciliation - coming together as friends

Sounds like you have done the Truth part. Just start reconciling. Perhaps collaboratively work towards a better future if the opportunity presents itself. At the very least, show that you are up for it.

Note I did not say guilt or compensation. You can do that if you want but it is not a requirement.

October 2024. I cannot wait for that to happen!

Property tax has nothing to do with unrealized gains. It is an attempt to charge a services tax in an equitable way. It is like putting road taxes in gasoline. Framing it as a crude consumption tax would be more appropriate.

The property tax you pay on your home is a tiny fraction of its value. If we were charging those kinds of tiny percentages to billionaires you would be up in arms.

I do not have to argue abolishing property taxes because they do not introduce the kinds of brain dead distortions that “unrealized gains” taxes would. Even still, there are actually carve outs for them in most countries. Where I live, as an example, seniors can defer property tax until the property is sold ( you know, until the wealth has been realized ). As I said above though, it is really a service tax and so, even when delayed, the amount is based on assessed value every year.

If property tax was a model for your unrealized gains tax it would have these features:

• quite a small percentage of the assessed value
• the ability to defer until value had been realized

Based on the discussion here, a tax like that is not going to satisfy the mob.

Like I said, tax the rich. Tax the hell out of them. Just don’t do it in such a broken way.

Stop acting like I am defending rich people or arguing against taxes. I have been very clear that I am not. It seems equally clear that you have no rational response to what I am saying which is why you keep pretending that I am arguing for wealth inequality instead of just math. The people hit hardest by bad tax policy are always the middle class. The same would be true of a wrong-headed unrealized gains tax, no matter how much shouting about billionaires was used to make it more popular.

Part of me wants to write off the Russian settlers comment as mindless FUD. Then I remember that Donald Trump was getting cozy with Putin while throwing tariffs at Canada, pulling out of NATO, and getting upset at the press that Trudeau had a better handshake or that Ivanka was checking him out a dinner parties.

You can never say 100% who your friends will be in the future.

I hope both Russia and Trump suffer horrible defeats this winter. Then I can go back to laughing at how stupid the settlers comment is.

How could you misunderstand his comment so completely?

Bitcoin is not money. You cannot file your tax return with a line-item with the number of Bitcoin you were paid. On a US tax return, you have to say how many USD you were paid. On a Canadian return, it is Canadian dollars. In the UK, it would be GBP.

If I demanded that my US employer paid me in GBP, they may do so. They would also track internally the dates they paid me, the value in USD that they paid me, and the exchange rate to GBP. The tax deducted from my check would be in USD.

This is part of the tax code in every country. You get paid in the currency of that jurisdiction ( regardless of how you choose to take payment ).

If you wanted to receive Bitcoin, it would be an investment. The taxable income would be the value on the day I received it. The value on the day that I sold is irrelevant. This is not “unrealized gains” by any stretch.

You cannot “elect” how to be paid for tax purposes. The currency on your return is a matter of law as are the rules about moving in and out of that currency. This is practically the definition of “realization”.

You probably do get taxed on it ( property tax? ). However I agree that taxing you on the “unrealized gains” from your home would be insane.

Think of how many seniors with a fixed income would be out on the street if this was to happen. Little old ladies in houses they bought decades before. Tax codes often defer even property taxes for seniors as they recognize that these people do not have actual “wealth” outside of these illiquid assets.

Of course, those houses will eventually be sold. If you want to collect more tax, increase the amount of tax you collect on those actual gains.

Both my examples are about being taxed on money that may never exist. Your second comment makes me think you did not understand me.

I am not talking about political impossibility. And I am certainly not talking about the difficulty in calculating current market value. I am talking about the poor correlation between current value and the gains that will potentially actually be “realized”. I am talking about bad policy.

Here is an example. Back in the 2000’s, there were people that were taxed on the value of their stock options using exactly this same logic ( the “value” on paper ). Later, when the market crashed, there was not even enough value left in the shares and options to pay the taxes already owing. People literally paid well over 100% tax ( in some cases hundreds of percent ). Who were these super rich people that deserved such tax treatment? Many were relatively young employees of technology companies using equity as compensation. These employees had little wealth before being taxed on their “unrealized gains” and may have been bankrupt after. The whole concept is incredibly flawed.

I personally dislike Elon Musk. But even with him, taxing him on what he was worth at the high point would be totally unjust as he is not worth that now. It makes way more sense ( in my view ) to tax him when, and if, any of that wealth materializes. I am no fan of Donald Trump. But I think it would have been totally insane to tax him on the value of his Trump Media “wealth” when it was “valued” at $8 billion. If he gets even $1 billion out of it I will be amazed. Anyway, tax him on that. Tax it at 90% if you want. But don’t tax him on “wealth” that nobody is ever going to see.

I do not know what state you are in but I am unaware of anywhere that would tax you on “unrealized” income from your high-tax bracket salary. Nobody is taxing you on the “unrealized” benefit of your salary. Are you trying to tell me that it does? Where I am, leaving the jurisdiction for more than 6 months would render my income and gains beyond that point non-taxable so the government of course wants a “final return”. Are you talking about something similar?

Again, I am all for taxing the rich. Tax actual gains however you want. What I do not think you should do is tax “unrealized” gains. It is an incredibly flawed idea.

I know the 12 year olds will be upset but this is dumb.

Unrealized gains may never be realized. If they ever are, they may be worth less at that point than the tax you paid. It is like taxing everybody on income at the beginning of the year and then telling them tough luck if they get fired and never get that income.

Also, borrowing in assets does not make you wealthier. How much tax should we charge people when they get a mortgage ( not when they sell, when they first borrow ). I mean, somebody just gave you hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why shouldn’t you have to pay tax on that? ( according to the OP at least ).

Anyway, I will stop there. We are not going to get back at the rich by saying a bunch of stupid things. If you don’t like generational wealth, fine. Have an estate tax. If you don’t like windfall wealth, fine. Have a super high progressive tax rate. I have no problem limiting extreme wealth ( it won’t hurt me ). But “tax people I don’t like on things that make no sense” just tells people you cannot think well and are not into math.

“because horses dont run on sequestered carbon”

Um. Yes they do.

Too many people watching Donald Trump on TV. No matter what your politics, he has done just catastrophic damage to how people think tariffs work, who pays for them ( like actually pays the money directly ), and whose economy gets hurt as a result.

It is still about $2 billion at today’s price.

Good luck getting any of that for the campaign though. A billion of that goes to him. The rest goes to lawsuits.

Better that people do not know this but I am pretty sure he is Canadian. No Presidential risk.

The downvotes make me chuckle. You know, I actually did not really think about how much Apple hardware I had until I listed it off. The Apple fans and I obviously agree on some stuff ( just not the OS so much I guess ).

I do have an iPhone 15 though ( running iOS ). I am not very likely to put Android or Linux on it anytime soon.

Except Macs that go out of support do turn into pumpkins. Because software will start to refuse to run on it because the OS is too old. That is how I define unusable.

OpenCore Legacy patcher is awesome but it is not without issue.

I guess some people think that unsupported operating systems causing GPU glitches or being stuck in ancient application versions is a better experience. Not me. I am very happy to put Linux on a Mac, get better performance, and enjoy totally up-to-date applications. If I really need to, I could always run one or two macOS or Windows applications in a VM. I am not sure what those would be though.

I am about to inherit another iMac from my wife. I put OpenCore Legacy Patcher on it to extend the life and she has hated it ever since I did that ( I put Sonoma on it ).

I am going to downgrade her to Monterey ( a massive pain since macOS does not support downgrades ). If she still does not like it, I will have a 27” iMac running Linux. Even if she likes it, it won’t be long before Office or Teams or something won’t run on the OS anymore. So, it will be Linux eventually.

I have Linux installed on an iMac, a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac Pro ( Proxmox ).

It does not sound like we would agree.

Thank you for suggesting we not harass anyone. That is a lot better than I have seen elsewhere related to this.

Basilisk is the odd one out here. It is a continuation of pre-Servo Firefox ( Firefox before Rust ). It is not exactly a “new” engine.

Ladybird is probably the most exciting project as it is most likely to create a new independent browser suitable for daily use.

Servo was very exciting back when Mozilla was heavily invested in it. Sadly, it was long dormant. It really seems to be heating up again though so that is awesome.

Mozilla is not really associated with Servo anymore.

I would be surprised to see Firefox move to Servo.

Gecko is of course Open Source. It is also pretty much the oldest browser engine code base and written in C++. Servo is modern and Rust. Gecko started at Netscape.

The other problem is that Gecko is hard to embed.