Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
5 6 Hhampuz
4 6 sportsbet.io

This month 123 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

Murat informs me that he wishes to withdraw his bid.

Bids from BITCOINET.NET will not be accepted.

Bids must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC/slot. If they are not, then I always round down to the next valid bid amount.

Current auction status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
5 6 Hhampuz
2 4 tokyohd
2 4 cryptobradley

The auction continues.

Only abused IP ranges have to pay a fee. The fee is an anti-abuse measure, and it is not meant to be (and isn't) much of a source of revenue.

If any very-veteran members want to volunteer, I can give you the ability to whitelist users. (All Staff can already whitelist users, as well.) Perhaps then someone could create a topic like "List of email addresses for people who can whitelist you for free", which I could link-to on the evil fee page. However, these IPs have evil for a reason. If it was sufficient for them to just solve a captcha or something, I'd have them do that. Before whitelisting someone, you have to do something to be pretty sure that they're not evading a ban and just going to get banned again. You may get the impression from complaints on the forum that everyone hits the fee and it's never warranted, but this is selection bias: the fee is more rare, and the vast majority of accounts that hit it should not be whitelisted.

My record is pretty terrible on these, so I might as well give an extremely specific prediction and maximize how wrong I am.

July
USD monetary conditions are tightening substantially. Helicopter money programs are running out, M2 growth is slowing, and now the Fed is vacuuming up tons of excess money via reverse repo. This will suck money out of speculative areas such as BTC.

The US debt ceiling will be hit, and Congress won't do anything about it for a while, but this won't cause an immediate issue. CPI will be at expectations. Growth and employment will be worse than expectations. Stocks will be flat.

Some people are worried about the GBTC lockups expiring in the middle of this month, but I don't think that this will have much effect at all. If someone created GBTC shares just to arbitrage the premium, then they would've hedged their exposure to BTC; when they sell/redeem their GBTC shares, unwinding their hedge should make their net impact on the market neutral. If someone created GBTC shares because they wanted to be long BTC, then they knew the risks, they probably intended BTC to be a permanent part of their portfolio, and they're probably not going to exit their BTC position at a huge loss just because they now can.

BTC price: $30k
August
A wave of anti-crypto regulatory attention/action will be announced in the US and elsewhere with ransomware used as a fear tactic, but this will be too vague & insubstantial to have more than a short-term price impact. (Regulatory crackdowns could be very damaging to the ecosystem and hurt the BTC price long-term, but I don't think that anything like this will take effect or severely hurt sentiment before the end of the year.)

CPI will be historically high, but below expectations. Growth and employment will be worse than expectations. Stocks will be somewhat down.

BTC price: $28k
September
The US's inability to issue debt will cause some sort of moderate-severity market hiccup, such as a shortage of collateral causing rates to spike up. This will be mostly-resolved through some sort of emergency Fed action, but it will shake the market's confidence.

Simultaneously, as helicopter money programs have fully wound down and bank accounts will have gotten much more empty than previously, people will start realizing that they need money. But the job market will become tight very quickly due to the stampede of people looking for jobs and a significant slowdown in economic activity by this point. Because they need money, and also due to concern about the market hiccup mentioned in the previous paragraph, people will sell their liquid assets such as bonds, stocks, and BTC. As the market goes down from this, it will start a cycle of panic selling. There will be a 10% drop in the stock market and a 20% drop in the BTC price, though about half of this will be recovered in a couple of weeks.

The Fed will change policy to achieve maximally-loose monetary conditions; this is bullish for BTC.

From this point forward, CPI, growth, and employment will all be below expectations each month.

BTC price: $25k
October
The Democrats will enact a 15% global minimum corporate tax, increase the US corporate tax rate to 25%, and do Biden's proposed capital gains tax increase but with a rate of 28% instead of the proposed 43.4% and without Biden's proposed retroactivity. This is slightly negative for BTC (there will be some selling to front-run the tax increase), and very bad for growth stocks. Despite the prospect of infrastructure dollars, the stock market will on the whole drop 5% immediately and then start a slow downward slide lasting many months, but BTC will not drop much.

BTC will look attractive compared to other assets, especially to the many institutions who have already been eyeing it for a while but have been scared to dip their toes in. Like gold, it will be seen as a hedge against future low growth. Growth stocks also perform well in low-growth periods, but they will be negatively impacted by the global minimum corporate tax; BTC pays no corporate tax. Even though inflation will not actually be especially high at this point, there will still be a lot of fear of inflation due to all of the money-printing, and BTC will also be seen as a hedge against inflation. BTC will have low correlation with markets in at least the latest drop, and the price will look attractive. Robinhood will start to offer very attractive interest on BTC and other crypto holdings, similar to BlockFi - way more than you can get with any USD savings account. Due to all of these factors, BTC sentiment will turn very bullish.

BTC price: $40k
November
A BTC ETF will finally be approved. Pretty much everyone in the financial world thinks that this is long overdue, and the number of applicants keeps growing. A Bitcoin ETF would probably attract a billion dollars in assets within the following 12 months, and this direct inflow alongside the indirect boost in sentiment from the approval will add napalm to the already-hot BTC market.

CPI will fall below 2% as supply issues are mostly cleaned up and the worsening consumer balance sheet hurts demand. This hurts the narrative of buying BTC because of inflation, but this is only a small part of BTC's value proposition, and people will still worry about inflation even if it's low at the moment. Long-term, I think that the macro environment is favorable to BTC whenever wider economic growth is low, regardless of the level of inflation.

December 7 price: $72,046 (box 251)

(I might've gone a few boxes higher, but they were taken. This seems to be a popular price range!)

Deleted posts are at first just hidden from public view. To steal the ID from such a post, the deleted post is given a new ID. The deleted spam post in this case now has ID 57394364.

After about a year, deleted posts are moved off of the live database and into an archive database, and no longer occupy their original message ID in the live database. After about another year, deleted posts are deleted from the archive database as well, though they will probably still exist in offline backups.

Done.

Posts are ordered in threads by message ID. What we do in these cases is that we repurpose the ID of a deleted post which lies in the appropriate range.


An ID isn't available right at the top. I added one as far up as possible.

This month 130 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon August 10 (US Eastern time) to noon September 9. (30 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between August 2 and August 5, but August 3 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon August 9. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between August 2 and August 5. Times closer to 8:00AM August 3 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
4 16 lightlord
2 16 Murat
3 14 Stunna

Bids from Zhanar Xive and OddClaude will not be accepted.

Current auction status:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 8 cyberianmine
2 6 AliceMoore
4 6 sportsbet.io
2 2 tokyohd

The auction continues.

A topic where you ask people to guess the price and give their reasoning would not be incentivized posting warranting movement to Games & Rounds. But because there is a prize, it is incentivized posting and should be moved to Games & Rounds according to the rules-as-written.

However: Almost all rules are subject to mod discretion. The reason for the rule against games with incentivized posting outside of "Games & Rounds" is to prevent unfair/excessive bumping and "last-posts"-filling except in "quarantine" sections which people can ignore.  In El duderino_'s games:
 - El duderino has no incentive to cause spammy replies. The prize is a true gift.
 - The game has a pretty high entry requirement which prevents the replies from actually becoming spammy.
 - El duderino_ very much prefers that the games be in Speculation rather than Games & Rounds.

Therefore, it's most appropriate in this case to apply mod discretion and make an exception to the rules as written; El duderino_'s future games of this sort can stay in Speculation.

RIP. He was a total nutcase, and probably not a very good person on the whole, but what a wild guy. I think that he first really came to my attention when he participated in the 2016 Libertarian Party presidential primary. It was also around that time that he really got into the crypto scene IIRC, though searching the forum, apparently he was into Bitcoin at least as early as 2013.

His death will probably always be a mystery. Maybe he faked his own death, similar to how he escaped Belize by expertly disguising himself. Maybe he was suicided, as he claimed might happen. But he was mentally unstable to begin with, and I can definitely believe that he could've killed himself, especially due to his difficult situation. In any case, he'd be happy with all of this discussion and mystery which will long survive him.

Thanks!

Now that I'm officially an old man, I'll have to ban all swearing, loud music, and walking on my lawn.

Imagine that you made $2 million in long-term BTC gains by buying in March 2020 and cashing out 100% during the highs of 2021, and then you decide to put all of your money into shares of AMC. Then you realize in April of 2022 that you owe over $800k in taxes. At that point it's too late to apply capital losses, since it's now the year after you made the gains. Capital losses don't carry backward at all, and they only carry forward a very small limited amount per year. In this scenario, you have to hope that your AMC shares are still worth at least $800k, or else your net worth will probably now be negative.


I'm very curious to see how it plays out! These are unprecedented economic times in many ways.

Update: Biden released a proposal which would make the tax increase retroactive to sales made on or after April 28 of this year. However, I consider the chance of this actually making it into the final bill to be very small: probably less than a 5% probability. It's still a risk, though. If this goes through, there are probably several newly-minted crypto millionaires who will go from millionaire to ~broke due to realizing a lot of gains, not planning for an absolutely huge tax bill which isn't even law yet, and spending or recklessly-investing all of their gains...

Some people (eg. Cathie Wood) seem to think that the capital gains tax increase is no longer likely, but I don't agree at all. I still think that some increase is quite likely, with the same probabilities as I listed in my original post.


I don't think that the spending so far is beyond what the economy can endure, so I think that the "bill" will more likely be paid as stagnation and low growth over many years rather than continuing inflation. The deflationary forces (technology, the reduction of labor's value/importance/leverage, demographics, government drag, etc.) are very strong, so while lasting inflation is definitely possible, and government action can definitely cause it if they keep pursuing ultra-inflationary policies, 3%+ inflation lasting many months is not my base case, and if it did happen, it'd probably point toward some sort of more catastrophic economic breakdown. Later this year, I expect (but not with very high confidence) CPI to surprise the market to the downside, and the US may even enter a recession.

(Economic stagnation is probably a good environment for the BTC price, BTW. Though there are other downside risks that could certainly offset this.)


No: I'm an ancap, so I'd work toward ending the state entirely. Exactly how this would be done would depend on which ridiculous hypothetical is under consideration. In any hypothetical scenario with even a dash of reality thrown into it, I'd be very likely to at least mostly fail to end the state; if for example there was a military coup and they named me emperor from out of nowhere, I'd almost certainly be assassinated within a week, and in any case I'd probably largely fail to effectively take advantage of the situation due to lack of the relevant skills on my part.

Anarcho-capitalism probably can't be achieved unless/until at least 20% of the population has some understanding of it and believes that it could work and be an improvement. So it's not happening anytime soon.

Two of the biggest problems with modern politics are:
 1. Government interference in everyday life has been relatively less in the last couple of generations than in the past, and so people have forgotten how much government sucks. People have also spent the majorities of their lives in government-run institutions. As a result, people believe that the obvious solution to any problem is for the government to solve it. While the government can solve many problems, it always does it extremely inefficiently, so too many government "solutions" drag down the entire economy. And if solving the problem requires deciding between trade-offs or competing interests, as is often the case, then the government "solves" the problem in an arbitrary and usually very unfair, unethical, and irrational way. People want to solve every problem with the government, but the more this actually happens, the worse things get.
 2. People believe in democracy as a goal unto itself, but too much democracy gives poor results. Making things more and more democratic, as many people want to do, usually makes things worse and worse. The average person makes very poor policy decisions, in large part because it's rational for them to be ignorant of policy. (Who actually thinks that Joe Biden or Donald Trump are anywhere close to being the most rationally effective heads of the executive branch, for example?) There's also nothing about democracy which makes it inherently more ethical than any other form of state: it's still one group of people using violent aggression on another group to get what they want. Societies/states would be more effective if they had a more reasonable end goal in mind (eg. "increasing our citizens' wealth, freedom, and happiness"), and then they viewed any democratic elements of the state as merely a tool to get to this end goal. If "maximize democracy" is your end goal, then you're headed for dystopia.

If a state is to exist at all, I think the most effective situation would be for the entire culture to have intense skepticism of government, for the state to be run by a fairly entrenched "aristocracy", but for a democratic "safety valve" to be able to shake up the aristocracy when they get too comfortable and ineffective. You want to avoid the current situation in many Western countries where politicians can't feel secure for even a minute and so they always think politically rather than rationally. But you also want to avoid the situation in autocratic regimes where the leadership feels completely free to do absolutely anything they want on a whim.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon July 8 (US Eastern time) to noon August 10. (33 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between June 29 and July 2, but July 1 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon July 7. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, if you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between June 29 and July 2. Times closer to 8:00AM July 1 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 8 zepherius
1 6 tokyohd
6 6 DogecoinMachine
1 4 lightlord

This month 135 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

We may someday... But it's a common problem for people to incorrectly act as though we live in a post-scarcity world right now, and thereby make disastrous plans. Even the Soviet Union often had this mindset, even though in hindisight we were much farther from post-scarcity in the time of the Soviet Union.

Our economy may be efficient enough nowadays that it might be able to survive giving everyone $xxxx/month, for example, though that would definitely reduce economic growth. And if this "free money" grows beyond the point where the economy can bear it, you'd see price inflation and shortages.


In the US, you don't have capital gains if the coins are just sitting around. But if you trade BTC for some other coin, or somehow trade BTC for stocks, or buy goods with BTC, then these are all taxable transactions, even if there was no fiat currency: you've earned capital gains equal to the fair market value of the non-BTC side of the trade. (This is not tax advice. Talk to a tax professional.)

A tax on unrealized gains and/or total wealth (which have been proposed in the US but aren't likely IMO) would be difficult, and would force you to sell. BTC is actually comparatively easy here, since many people have unrealized capital gains on things that they can't easily sell, like restricted shares, land, ownership in a private business, etc.


If I was emperor, I'd abolish government entirely (or as close as possible)... But if I was instead required to design an income tax system which would collect a specific amount of money each year, I think that I would make the capital gains rate the same as the earned income rate. I'd also eliminate step-up-basis with the estate tax, if I couldn't eliminate the estate tax entirely. Both of these things just seem unfair to me, and they distort the market. Why should people be incentivized to sit on assets for a year? How does it make any sense for bond interest to be taxed more than stock dividends? Why should stock researchers who spend 8 hours per day picking the right stocks pay less in tax than welders? However, I would also make these three substantial tax-lowering changes:

• Every year, you should be able to optionally report that your net worth (assets minus liabilities) was at least $X, and then you should get a credit depending on the inflation that year. For example, if the inflation rate was 2%, then you should be able to reduce your investment income (interest, dividends, and capital gains/losses) by 2% of $X. Inflation is basically a tax, and not having this credit discourages people from investing in safer investments; you need to at least beat inflation, and any gains are reduced by taxes, so you need at least ~4%/yr gain to just break even, which requires taking substantial risk.
• If you receive any dividends from a company that pays taxes, you should get a credit for your share of those taxes. For example, if you receive a $1/share dividend from AAPL, and AAPL paid $0.05/share in taxes, then only $0.95/share of your dividend should be taxable. Otherwise you're taxed twice: once at the corporate-tax level and once at the dividend tax level. Alternatively, just get rid of the corporate tax.
• Capital losses should carry forward with unlimited time and amount.

There have been periods of time where there was no favorable tax treatment for capital gains. It's never been nearly as high as 43.4%, but that's because the top marginal tax rate was much lower at the times when all income had the same tax rate.


True, in large part because people will use strategies like those I talked about in this topic.


They legally probably can be implemented retroactively, but I don't think they will be. It will probably take effect on sales starting Jan 1, 2022.