Andy Kessler touted San Jose Mayor and California candidate for Governor, Matt Mahan, as presenting a sufficiently centered (Progressive-)Democrat who opposes Party’s supposedly (they promise!) one-time billionaire tax on those Evil One-Percenters’ wealth, whether liquid or not.
But, Mr Mahan goes on [says Kessler], “I don’t believe that high-net-worth individuals should be able to borrow against appreciated assets endlessly as a way to avoid paying capital gains.” The mayor of the country’s 12th-largest city thinks that rather than impose wealth taxes, California should press Congress to eliminate the step-up in basis at death, so that estates or heirs would pay a tax on the appreciation of a decedent’s assets. (California has no estate tax.) That wouldn’t put “our economy, our engine of innovation and prosperity, at risk.”
Three guesses where that would take our economy. Here’s a hint:
No one wealthy would own capital assets, whether personal or enterprise—they’d lease them. That would thoroughly alter the structure of our private economy, real, financial, business ownership, and it would do so in ways that we won’t know until it starts happening. That’s dangerous.
And that doesn’t get to the ability of parents to leave to their children what those parents spent a lifetime building—at least not in any substantial way. That’s even more dangerous.
This is an example of careless compromise: Mahan’s position doesn’t move things to the extreme left, but it does move things toward the left, rather than making an even split, much less moving things a little bit to the right. That’s a loss, not just for Conservatives, but for all of California’s citizens, wherever they are on the political spectrum.