The number of American who would be subject to the higher tax is only important to uninformed voters who care about such things. What matters is the portion of appreciated assets OWNED by those people. Capital markets need to be liquid, and capital needs to flow to the best uses. Those with a lot of capital should be encouraged to sell their mature winners and fund new ventures. Raising the capital gains tax rate discourages recycling capital by those who have the most to recycle.

Counteracting that force would be the tax of capital gains at death. Right now, the step-up in basis accounts for a lot of HODLing of appreciated shares. If that benefit is lost, the shares would be more likely to be sold when market conditions warrant. But that assumes that both parts of the program pass. Even then, if the benefits of supplying capital go down, the cost of capital to users of capital must go up. That's what happened in the 1970's, and it's why "supply-side" economics was adopted in the 1980's. These proposals are overkill based on resentment of the rich, not industrial/economic policy. This is NOT how to compete with the Chinese!

The "borrowing" ploy only works for real estate. Borrowing against stocks is subject to margin rules that make it inefficient on a broad scale. And it's harder to borrow against assets that carry a 50% tax hit when liquidated as collateral.

Biden's proposals sound good because they are "fair." But they are not good, because they kill the golden goose of risk capital. I suspect that cooler heads will prevail, or there will be a market crash, a recession, and repeal.