You are never taxed on money you put into your stock portfolio
This is patently untrue. But I think you know this because you later say "if you make $50,000 in wages in a year, then you pay taxes on that" -- that is money I put into my stock portfolio. It is not tax-exempt just because I invested it. Unless it's a traditional IRA, I guess.
I never said that after paying income tax, the invested money is taxed again. I asked why we should be taxed again on stock market earnings.
And... I just realized that my objection to being taxed on this is more or less just due to my general aversion to being taxed. I guess I wanted to think of taxation as a process that my money only goes through once. Like, if my income has been taxed, it gets stamped with "we already taxed her on this" and then everything that I do with it thereafter is not taxed. And yes, I understand that isn't how it works. Wishful thinking, etc.
Re: one poor person's point of view
This is patently untrue. But I think you know this because you later say "if you make $50,000 in wages in a year, then you pay taxes on that" -- that is money I put into my stock portfolio. It is not tax-exempt just because I invested it. Unless it's a traditional IRA, I guess.
I never said that after paying income tax, the invested money is taxed again. I asked why we should be taxed again on stock market earnings.
And... I just realized that my objection to being taxed on this is more or less just due to my general aversion to being taxed. I guess I wanted to think of taxation as a process that my money only goes through once. Like, if my income has been taxed, it gets stamped with "we already taxed her on this" and then everything that I do with it thereafter is not taxed. And yes, I understand that isn't how it works. Wishful thinking, etc.