There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

[blazespinnaker]

Something to ponder if you're a gold buyer.

[Down Under]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

Something to ponder if you're a gold buyer.

I suggest this be moved to Rant and Rave; definitely not News.

[LargoWinch]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

Last time Erin asked Timmy, she was reminded of this sad fact:

[ricket]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

Something to ponder if you're a gold buyer.

You only are a victim of taxation if you allow it.

A 3rd party transaction on the down-low can never be found out about by the government if both parties are in on it.

However, to have a massive currency deprectiation, there *is* no escape from that.

I'll take my chances thank you very much. Enjoy the concentration camps for thinking that "theres no way out so I might as well give up anyways".

[blazespinnaker]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

I suggest this be moved to Rant and Rave; definitely not News.

Right, forgot my link from credible news source:

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst071706.htm

[blazespinnaker]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

I'll take my chances thank you very much. Enjoy the concentration camps for thinking that "theres no way out so I might as well give up anyways".

There is a way out, but it doesn't involve betting against the house. I guess I'm an anti-gold bug because my dad lost a lot of money in the Hunts fiasco, when it went from 860 -> 500 after the government changed the rules on commodities and margin. Did it ever occur to you that the current run up in gold is significantly created by the GLD etf? We are in the midst of government regulation which would undermine investment in this ETF.

I also happen to remember that gold was outlawed for private ownership between 1933 and 1974.

I can sleep with my investment in real estate, because when I wake up - I still have a house. If my investment in gold dropped, what would I have? Nothing.

For those folks who got in at 250->700, you've done well, and I congratulate you. For those piling on now, make sure you know what you're doing.

[aaron]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

There is a way out, but it doesn't involve betting against the house. I guess I'm an anti-gold bug because my dad lost a lot of money in the Hunts fiasco, when it went from 860 -> 500 after the government changed the rules on commodities and margin. Did it ever occur to you that the current run up in gold is significantly created by the GLD etf? We are in the midst of government regulation which would undermine investment in this ETF.

I also happen to remember that gold was outlawed for private ownership between 1933 and 1974.

I can sleep with my investment in real estate, because when I wake up - I still have a house. If my investment in gold dropped, what would I have? Nothing.

For those folks who got in at 250->700, you've done well, and I congratulate you. For those piling on now, make sure you know what you're doing.

You have a house until you are taxed out of it. It is hard to tax gold holdings. It is easy to tax real estate. When your local schools are getting crushed because they lack funds, where are they going to get more money?

[lurker]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

You have a house until you are taxed out of it. It is hard to tax gold holdings. It is easy to tax real estate. When your local schools are getting crushed because they lack funds, where are they going to get more money?

When they attempt to jack up property tax all of my neighbors will be on my side to fight it. The majority of families own (a percentage of) a house. They all vote.

When they attempt to increase the burden of holding precious metals a handful of gold bugs (who the mainstream media will easily portray as nuts) will help me fight it.

I'd wager that it would be politically easier for the government to confiscate gold, or at least tax it punitively, than it would be for local governments to significantly increase property taxes.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

You have a house until you are taxed out of it.

At least in Texas (don't know about other places) once one is 65, one can never be taxed out of ones residence. You can file a request to have the taxes delayed as long as you want. In the worst case, the state and local governments are stuck trying to get the taxes out of your estate after you die. So long as you own your place free and clear, and you can jump through the modest beauracratic hoops, you're good for life.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

I'd wager that it would be politically easier for the government to confiscate gold, or at least tax it punitively, than it would be for local governments to significantly increase property taxes.

In Texas, real estate tax increases are capped at a modest rate for seniors over 65, if I understand correctly what I read a few weeks ago.

[medved]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

There is a way out, but it doesn't involve betting against the house. I guess I'm an anti-gold bug because my dad lost a lot of money in the Hunts fiasco, when it went from 860 -> 500 after the government changed the rules on commodities and margin. Did it ever occur to you that the current run up in gold is significantly created by the GLD etf? We are in the midst of government regulation which would undermine investment in this ETF.

I also happen to remember that gold was outlawed for private ownership between 1933 and 1974.

I can sleep with my investment in real estate, because when I wake up - I still have a house. If my investment in gold dropped, what would I have? Nothing.

For those folks who got in at 250->700, you've done well, and I congratulate you. For those piling on now, make sure you know what you're doing.

If you can sleep in your investment, it is not an investment but a necessity. House is no competition to gold as a savings vehicle. By definition gold is good for preserving value of savings that exceed your needs. You are not going to buy more houses if you happen to earn some extra $10K. In other words, gold is a savings vehicle for the "rich", i.e. people that earn enough to satisfy their basic needs.

It still does not solve the investment problem. Gold is not an investment, and thanks to excessive gov't regulation there is no asset class, that can be viewed as a good investment.

http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=402...c=62&cg=4&mset

[charliebrown]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

I have seen the news on futures trading restrictions. Is there also something out there about GLD? I'm sure the feds would love to crash this ETF. It would make the dollar look like a good investment again.

I have a lot of GLD. Maybe I should move some to CEF.

[charliebrown]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

What is modest? In my county they are capped at 5% per year. With high taxes to start with 2.5% of home value, high real-estate values, and stagnant wages, a few years and you could see a wave of defaults triggered by i can't afford my taxes.

I moved in 98. Taxes were 4800, now they are 8100.

Oh and I don't know about TX, but in illinois prop taxes are NOT house price * tax rate. They are (tax_revenue_levied * your_house_value / total_taxable_real_estate). Therefore declining home values do not mean less tax. It's only if your home moves down more than the average home, or if the tax_revnue_levied decrease that your bill will decrease. My taxes went UP 5% last year. I dream of McMansions and tear downs

[Raz]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

Inflation not only screws the many wage-earners in order to enrich the well-connected few (banksters, politicians, etc.),
it is a cancer on the ethics and morals of a society at large.


Theodore Dalrymple

Inflation’s Moral Hazard

An age of loose money not only destroys savings; it corrodes character.



Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Runaway inflation in Germany, which turned money into wallpaper, undermined the Weimar Republic and led to Hitler’s rise.

Information from the most diverse sources sometimes coalesces and provokes reflection on a subject to which one has not previously given sufficient thought. This happened to me recently with regard to the effect of monetary inflation on human character. With many observers predicting a substantial rise in inflation as a result of various government spending programs undertaken to reverse the current global downturn, the topic is anything but academic.

I was reading The Innocence of Edith Thompson, by Lewis Broad, a book about a notorious murder in 1920s London. Freddy Bywaters was a handsome young sailor, Edith Thompson an unsatisfactorily married woman. They had a torrid love affair, and Bywaters eventually stabbed Thompson’s husband to death as he walked home one evening from the theater with his wife. Thompson’s love letters to Bywaters, prosecutors claimed, were an incitement to murder—such an incitement that they rendered her a murderess herself. She was found guilty of the deed and hanged. Broad’s book—written in 1952, 31 years after the event—happens to mention Thompson’s comparative prosperity. She managed a millinery shop and earned enough to put her in the middle class: “six pounds per week,” as the author puts it, “or twelve pounds in our debased currency.” A doubling of prices in three decades called a debasement of the currency? What would Broad have written if he knew what was to come in the years ahead?

Then I began reading Ursa Major, a study of Doctor Johnson by C. E. Vulliamy. It was hostile to the great man; but from the point of view of inflation, what was interesting was Johnson’s pension from the crown. Worth 300 pounds per year when granted in 1762, Vulliamy informs us, it would have been worth 800 pounds at the time of Ursa Major’s publication in 1946.
But that 800 pounds, according to Broad’s book, would have been worth only 400 pounds as recently as 1921. If we put these two stories together, it means that 300 pounds in 1762 was the equivalent of 400 pounds in 1921; or, in other words, that in a century and a half, prices rose in Britain by about 33 percent, an overall rate so slow as to have been almost imperceptible year to year, even decade to decade. Such stability must have seemed more a fact of nature than a consequence of human behavior or policy, and therefore something that would last forever.

Of course, calculations of prices between different historical epochs can be inexact, if only because some things available to later ages were not available to earlier ones. What was the price of a chocolate bar in 1762? We can never know: bars of chocolate did not exist then.

Nevertheless, I can attest to a prolonged era of price stability from evidence in my own lifetime. When I was born, it cost one and a half times as much to send a letter as it did 100 years earlier. In my childhood, during the fifties, we still used the same coins, with the same denominations, that people had used during the Victorian era.
The silver coins were still made of silver, not a worthless silvery metal. Occasionally, we would even come across pre-Victorian coins. Their continued use was not absurd: though prices had risen, they still bore some resemblance to what they had been in the earlier time. When my grandmother gave me a florin—one-tenth of a pound—I felt rich. It was enough, in any case, to buy a paperback book; between 50 and 60 times as much would be required now. ...

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_...inflation.html

[hayekvindicated]

Re: There is nothing more certain than death and tax by inflation.

You only are a victim of taxation if you allow it.

A 3rd party transaction on the down-low can never be found out about by the government if both parties are in on it.

You Sir deserve honorary Indian citizenship!;)