Andrew Ross Sorkin has a column about Hillary Clinton's plan to raise capital gains taxes.
He writes: "Individuals in the top bracket would pay ordinary income tax on the sale of investments — 39.6 percent — in the first two years and "then the rate would decrease each year" over the next four years until it returns to the current capital gains rate of 20 percent." That "20 percent" description understates the current top capital gains rate, which the Times has elsewhere (for example, here, here, and here) more accurately described as 23.8%. (A 3.8 percentage point Medicare tax is added to the 20%, and in some places, state and local income tax also applies).
The column by Mr. Sorkin goes on:
Curiously, Mrs. Clinton says the new tax structure would apply only to the nation's wealthiest in the top tax bracket. (Why she wants to give incentives to the richest to make long-term investments and those with less wealth to be able to day-trade without any disincentive is inexplicable.)
It's not "inexplicable," it's totally understandable, if one grasps that Mrs. Clinton's purpose isn't to raise revenue for the government or even to weigh in on long-term versus short-term, but simply to join in the fight against "inequality" by punishing people who are doing well financially. She's not trying to help rich people by giving them better incentives to take a long-term approach. She's trying to hurt them by raising their taxes (there are few enough of them that it won't appreciably hurt her chances of getting elected). If she started raising taxes on less wealthy people, it could hurt her more politically, because those are the people who are more inclined to vote for her.
Maybe Mr. Sorkin is being arch here and I am just missing it.