I see a lot of people on Twitter desperately trying to defend the insane, suicidal tax proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris on “unrealized capital gains.”

It’s been a while since anyone has proposed a dumber idea, so in that sense, at least, she is a historic candidate. And those who think it’s a good idea are historically stupid.

As many others have pointed out already, such a tax would harm everyone investing for retirement, depressing asset values as the uber-rich are forced to make massive annual sales just to pay the tax. And what I'd really like to know is whether, if I'm ever forced to pay taxes on stocks I'm still holding just because their value went up on paper, do I get my money back when their on-paper value goes back down again months or years later?

The best defense of this tax, intellectually, is that it falls on only the filthy rich, meaning that only a relatively modest number of people will be completely screwed over by a system far more unfair and unjust than the one we have now. But if you support government screwing over Americans, so long as you get to choose which ones get screwed, that only calls your decency into question.

The reality is that........

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