By eliminating the capital gains tax people would be free to bring in their capital and invest it and when they sold they wouldn’t have to pay the capital gain. This would also free up money that was squired away in the Bahama’s to come to America and invest without penalty.
Oh, I understand all that. I’m just saying I’ve yet to hear it seriously articulated on the financial networks, and I haven’t heard good reasons to oppose it. It’s being ignored. Moot point, I suppose, now that the bailout has brought us socialism and pork.
Actually, in some ways I think the fact that capital gains taxes are lower than taxes on dividends is responsible for a lot of market problems. If dividends weren't taxed more than capital gains, companies could try to maintain a constant share price (selling shares as necessary to do so) and have investors receive their reward in the form of dividends. To the extent that investors want to use their dividends to buy more stock, they could, but stocks would avoid the boom/bust cycle that so often plagues them.