The thing that bothers me when people say “oh its unrealized gains, it’s not real money” is that they use those unrealized gains as collateral for loans of real money. They effectively ARE that rich.
With money they loan from a bank, using whatever they bought with the previous loan as collateral.
It’s credit all the way down.
And that ends when they die, at which point the stocks get stepped up in basis so the taxes are almost completely avoided. Or they structure their debts in such a way that certain entities can be bankrupted without impacting the actual assets.
Things get wild when you’re in the 0.1% and above.
It’s BS that you can borrow against it. If he did sell it the valuation would drop.
Banks don’t take this into consideration when assessing collateral?
Lol, who downvotes a question?
Take what into account? They basically look at current valuations and offer loans up to some fraction of that amount.
And that’s generally the way the ultra-rich operate, they don’t actually sell anything, they just borrow against their assets. They punt the can down the road until they die, at which point those unrealized gains get stepped up in basis for those who inherit it. If you have enough stock assets, you can service the debt with the capital gains you’re forced to realize (i.e. dividends).
So the bank sees someone with $100B in assets asking for a $10M loan or whatever, and they’re completely happy to offer that, because even if the stock gets cut in half, he can still pay the debt.
