Capital Gains Taxes and Air Travel

Capital Gains Taxes

In a move that some are criticizing as a play at class warfare, President Obama has drawn national attention to capital gains taxes.

Senior Counsel Hans Bader comments.

“Capital gains taxes are much too high, rather than too low. They are effectively a tax on savings, since when your investments go up solely due to inflation, you have to pay capital gains tax on them when you sell them, even though you didn’t really get any richer. Thanks to capital gains taxes, you get punished just for living during a period of inflation.”

Air Travel

Air travel has not evolved much in recent years—though that may soon change, with private companies advancing into space travel.

Policy Analyst Ryan Young comments.

“Flight times from New York to London have barely budged in 50 years.If anything, it’s slower now that the Concorde is out of service. That could change in the next 15-20 years with the dawn of space tourism. A spacecraft has to travel about 17,000 miles per hour to stay in orbit. A partnership between KLM airlines and a wealthy Formula One mogul hopes to make first-generational suborbital crafts that can reach 2,200 miles per hour, with an eventual goal of hitting 13,750 miles per hour. This is good for more than space tourism — a trip from London to Sydney would take an hour and 45 minutes. That’s about the same as a flight today from New York to Chicago.”