Do I really have to point out that a capital gain, even if highly taxed, is still BETTER OFF than having made no gain at all?! Lets do a little Gedanken experiment. Say I've $100 I want to preserve. Say I buy some stable asset.
Now lets say the wise wise men at the Fed double the money supply and my asset is worth $200 in funny money.
Now lets say I wish to buy something else, like a case of SS109 since things are kinda getting sketchy outside. I have to transition back to dollars and pay, say long term capital gains: 20%.
My $100 had suddenly become $90 (or $180 inflated) and I have lost 10% of my labor and purchasing power.
Why? Because I am held responsible for the speculators at JP Morgan, Fannie Mae, etc. If they screw up down at the casino, I am obligated to clean up their mess. If they win, I get nothing.
That's not what I call free to leave the dollar.
"Lets do a little Gedanken experiment."
That's NOT a Gedanken thought experiment. A Gedanken thought experiment is what you do AFTER your opponent bases his logic on something NOT happening. In the Gedanken experiment, you then show how his logic falls apart if things DO happen.
To wit: U.S. versus Miller. In that Supreme Court case the Justices wrote that Miller was indeed in violation of federal law because he did not (there's that key word) show that his sawed off shotgun was a military weapon. And that sounds all great on the surface until you do a Gendanken thought experiment and realize that if Miller HAD shown that his weapon was used by U.S. troops in their most recent war experience (e.g. in the trenches in the Great War), that clearly he was abiding by Constitutional law.