This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 10th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's a desire mostly on the left to tax unrealized capital gains.

That's taxing increases in your stock portfolio with some big revenue projections

attached. But the numbers underlying those projections, according to Economic Historian

Phil Magnus, the math just doesn't work.

We spoke last month in Dallas.

There is a push that continues to this day, and I feel like it started before the pandemic,

or at least has been a predominantly of the left view that Americans by not taxing the unrealized gains that people have in their stock portfolios,

that is to say not really income because it's not cash and the value of those investments

can go up or down on any given day but they nonetheless believe that by taxing the unrealized gains on assets, illiquid assets, that America would be so much better off and would be able to pay for so much more.

You say that the numbers that are generated by some theoretical tax are just kind of nonsense.

Basically, basically.

And what happened here is in 2019 the New York Times was working with this economist

by the name of Gabriel Zuckuckman he's associated Thomas

Pachete and they ran the story and they claimed that

billionaires the wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate

than you and I, that average people.

Okay, so this is where we get the claim that Warren Buffett pays less in taxes.

They say the word less in taxes, but what they mean is a lower rate of taxes it's not less in taxes I'm confident that

Warren Buffett pays more in taxes than I do but a lower rate than his secretary

yeah yeah and they the White House is the Biden White House in

...