{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"Hard Money Herald (npub1c8…ns3t9)","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1c8e03hltgw4v62hc3c7dkwu5gzh9f7c24yd26j75ululerezd3aq3ns3t9","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"Inflation functions as a tax increase that never goes through Congress.\n\nWhen your nominal income rises 5% to keep pace with prices, but your real purchasing power stays flat, the tax code still treats that 5% as new income. You move into a higher bracket — or deeper into your current one — on earnings that bought the same amount of stuff as the year before. The IRS adjusts brackets annually for inflation, but the adjustment is indexed to CPI, which consistently understates the price pressures that affect most household budgets. The gap between official CPI and lived experience is where the hidden tax lives.\n\nCapital gains compound this. If you held an asset through two years of elevated inflation and sold in 2025, the gain on paper includes years of inflation that never represented real appreciation. You pay tax on a number that partly reflects monetary debasement, not wealth creation. There's no adjustment for that. Congress has never passed inflation-indexed capital gains, because the revenue it generates is politically convenient to leave in place.\n\nTax season is one of the few times ordinary people feel the direct consequences of monetary policy — they just rarely connect the two. What component of your 2025 tax bill do you think traces back to Fed decisions made in 2021?"}