Surprised in a Good Way

Joe Biden has announced that he intends to raise the capital gains tax rate on the wildly communist idea^* that people who work for a living should be taxed at a higher rate than people who sit on their ass waiting for their properties to appreciate.

I did not expect Biden to do something like this, but it is the right thing to do.  Capital has been under-taxed, and labor has been over-taxed for decades:

President Biden will seek new taxes on the rich, including a near doubling of the capital gains tax for people earning more than $1 million a year, to pay for the next phase in his $4 trillion plan to reshape the American economy.

Mr. Biden will also propose raising the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6 percent from 37 percent, the level it was cut to by President Donald J. Trump’s tax overhaul in 2017. The proposals are in line with Mr. Biden’s campaign promises to raise taxes on the wealthy but not on households earning less than $400,000.

$400,000 is still rich.  It's about 7 times the median family income.

The president will lay out the full proposal, which he calls the American Family Plan, next week. It will include about $1.5 trillion in new spending and tax credits meant to fight poverty, reduce child care costs for families, make prekindergarten and community college free to all, and establish a national paid leave program, according to people familiar with the proposal. It is not yet final and could change before next week.

………

To offset that cost, Mr. Biden will propose several tax increases he included in his campaign platform. That starts with raising the top marginal income tax and the tax on capital gains — the proceeds of selling an asset like a stock or a boat — for people earning more than $1 million. The plan would effectively increase the rate they pay on that income to 39.6 percent from 20 percent.

Capital gains income would also still be subject to a 3.8 percent surtax that helps fund the Affordable Care Act. It was unclear if the tax increase would also apply to income earned from dividends.

Hopefully, it will.  The rich, which means capital gains and dividends, have increasingly sucking more and more out of our society while contributing less and less.

^*Note for the snark impaired, the invocation of communism is sarcasm.