![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Reply to Grover Norquist
Back on September 7, The Washington Post printed a letter from my friend Walter Rybeck, well into his tenth decade, and still in possession of his marbles (he was at the Georgist conference this summer). Here it is:
Mr. Norquist is wrong
Grover Norquist, of no-new-tax-pledge fame, wants to ditch an old tax, as he suggested in his Aug. 29 Thursday Opinion column, “Indexing capital gains helps more than the rich.” He said those who sell homes bought more than 40 years ago shouldn’t be taxed on their gains that he claims, because of inflation, are “mostly imaginary.”
Wrong. The gains were very real, reflecting better schools, roads, mass transit, parks, etc., that the public created but most of which the homeowners kept as a windfall addition to their property value.
Wiping out the gains tax would further benefit the affluent but make already astronomic housing costs even more out of reach for new buyers and renters.
Walter Rybeck, Silver Spring
Mr. Norquist is wrong
Grover Norquist, of no-new-tax-pledge fame, wants to ditch an old tax, as he suggested in his Aug. 29 Thursday Opinion column, “Indexing capital gains helps more than the rich.” He said those who sell homes bought more than 40 years ago shouldn’t be taxed on their gains that he claims, because of inflation, are “mostly imaginary.”
Wrong. The gains were very real, reflecting better schools, roads, mass transit, parks, etc., that the public created but most of which the homeowners kept as a windfall addition to their property value.
Wiping out the gains tax would further benefit the affluent but make already astronomic housing costs even more out of reach for new buyers and renters.
Walter Rybeck, Silver Spring