[Editor’s note: To tap the wisdom of our distinguished group of Xconomists, we asked a few of them to answer this question heading into 2013: “What does your gut tell you will happen this year even though you don’t have data to prove it?”]
The war on success will continue on and capital gains taxes will go up even more than people think, harming the basic capital formation infrastructure that has fueled the tech boom.
Those who have fantasies that taxes don’t matter usually were born rich or have so much money they can impose their views on the rest of us. Note that none of them ever propose taxes on wealth—just taxes on people trying to get to where they already are. We won’t see the impact for some years, but we are slowly chipping away at our infrastructure that has allowed the United States to dominate the world in innovation, whether it is taxing the innovators more, or denying the best and brightest access to our shores.
The “war on success” waged by the guilty rich and labor unions will have a slow and detrimental impact.
