McCain understands intuitively, as well as intellectually, that capital gains taxes are voluntary taxes, i.e., they are never paid unless and until someone sells an asset. Further, taxing them as ordinary income, or close to it, as most in the Democratic Party plan to do, would distort decision-making, increase the use of tax shelters and demonstrably lower the amount of tax revenues coming into government at every level.

It is an absolute, empirically proven fact of tax policy that nearly one-half of all capital gains redound to the benefit of folks earning less than $50,000 a year.

The "soak the rich" rhetoric of the left finds both editorial pages and most op-ed columns, e.g. Paul Krugman of The New York Times, literally in denial of empirical evidence over the last half century, from Kennedy to Reagan and from Clinton to Bush 43, that every time tax rates on capital gains were reduced, the economy, tax receipts and the supply of labor have been strengthened. continued...