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Jun 9, 2022Liked by Virginia Postrel

But there is no indexing for capital gains. If you bought an asset for $100,000 30 years ago you would have to sell it for $210,000 today to break even. But you owe capital "gains" tax on $110,000 "gain"!!

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Born in 1965, so yeah I remember this.

Since the bracket indexing depends on the index, and we know the government is fiddling with what's in the index, I suspect that the brackets will fall behind (possibly not as much as they did then).

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My older brother bought his first house in the early 80s and the interest rate was 12.5%. He was just grousing to me about it because I bought a house in Spain and the interest rate is 1.5%.

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Of course we still face bracket creep. The 'official' inflation number is 8.6%. The current ShadowStats number, which uses the 1980 methodology, is at 16.8%. Trust me, the difference is bracket creep.

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The first car I bought myself was a Ford Escort in fall 1981. It cost around $6,000. My interest rate was 17.8 percent. The car I have now, a Mazda 2, cost around $13,000 in 2011 but with no interest. If things continue the way they’re going, I’m afraid that next time there will be no offset.

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