""This aint capitalism ... it's nanny stateism at best & cronyism at worst"
By this I was refering to the free market determining how & where the units of production are allocated and the price of goods & services by the mechanism of supply & demand.
In this regard I think that short selling distorts that mechanism in that it's goal is simply drive down prices without any reference to real supply & demand of the resources of the underlying business ie it distorts the 'pure' supply/demand alocation of resources. We are both describing the same problem, just from different angle or names.
With regard to Govs being involved in social and essential service ....... No, I don't think they should be out of those. If they were then what else would we need them for. lol. There are clearly 2 seperate concepts here. 1) Free market capitalism - profit making persuits - which are best left to private enterprise with Gov's involvement purely at the regulatory (policing) level to stop crimal behaviour. 2) Social & essential services which are non-profit making persuits, which clearly (by defintion) are not attractive to private enterprise & so are run by the state & paid for by its citizens (who also just happen to be the users).
As for capital gains discount, I don't agree with that distortion & have never sought it. I trade through company structures as a trader & am happy to pay the 30% tax on the P&L Personally I think playing the market as "an investor" is crazy. You give away the ability to make rational decisions (about selling) because of the 12 month time constraint to save what, a 5% tax saving ... maybe. ie assuming your earning reasonable money & "investing" your income will be increased by 50% of your "investment" profits, which at the top marginal rate would see you pay around 25% of your profits in tax. By investing as a trader you will pay 30% regardless of how long you've held the position BUT you can also claim all expenses involved in your trading business (& these are numerous & potentially quite profit reducing). The current market turmoil should be giving a lot of "investors" food for thought about the logic in being classified as "investors" rather than traders. I'm sure there are many who held of selling simply because they weren't yet eligible for the CG offset ..... so they may have lost 20, 30, 40% of their portfolio value just to protect a 5% tax saving!!!
