I am referring to unearned income, income one does not have to work for. How it affects one's level of comfort. I am not referring to one's level of comfort and how it is obtained (as you injected earned income into the discussion to present it as a false dichotomy).
If a person saves a portion of their earnings to invest in the market, they should be able to enjoy the comfort that comes from it.
If you invest your earned income and that earned income makes unearned income, you've just made money for sitting on your ass doing nothing. Now then, it is my position, if your ass is already fat and happy, I see no reason that unearned income should not be highly taxed, penalized, pilloried for your success, or whatever you want to call it.
Thanks for spelling it out so clearly. Swammerdami accuses me of not understanding capital gains taxes. I do, but I was responding to you and you are pretty explicit in wanting to tax investment income at very high rates.
After all, you've obtained the unearned income because you got lucky, not because you're a savvy investor.
How do you know how a person obtained their income? And the stock market is not Vegas (and even in Vegas there is a difference between blackjack and slots).
Perhaps a person is neither a savvy nor lucky stock picker, just a disciplined long-term investor putting their money into an index fund like VTSAX or VFIAX.
Just needed to get that out so we're on the same page, that no one is kidding themself here.
I think you are, but that's neither here nor there.
On the other hand we have unearned income in the form of support for those who cannot make ends meet. These people are not fat and happy in this context.
Unless the ends that cannot meet are the ends of their belt. *rimshot* I'll be here all week.
Now, I'm not talking about the lazy ones who sit around drinking forties, smoking weed, and making babies.
Aren't they the ones who are getting additional $3-3.6k per child? Of course, much of those funds will be spend on cheap beer and weed, not so much on their babies.
Or the physically or mentally handicapped. I'm talking about those who are willing to and do work hard every day but their intellectual capacity is such that they do not nor will they ever make enough to make ends meet.
And again, my "snouts" comment here refers to unearned income, not "money you earned".
If you make money and invest it, you are not some pig with your snout in a trough. Again, whose money do you think those "pigs" are feasting on? If I invest in S&P500 and have gains and dividends, that's still my money. Not government's. Now, of course some taxation is necessary, but not the high levels you seem to endorse.