> Ordinary people have to sell assets to take advantage of appreciation

> No one's talking about houses here. I thought that was obvious.

For most ordinary Americans, the largest asset they will ever own is their house. Owning that asset is the essence of the old American Dream. So it seems like your original comment was primarily about housing assets.

Anyone can get a home equity loan to access the appreciation the house might have. They don't pay taxes on the loan, and many people use the money on improvements that further increase at value of the asset. That combined with further asset appreciation and the loan pays for itself when the house is later sold.

Ordinary people can and do do this. The rich just do it at a much larger scale.

My original comment was about stock buybacks and how they boost stock prices. I repeat, no one was talking about houses. I thought it was obvious "assets" meant "stock" for the purposes of this comment thread. But since this is HN there's always at least one pedant.

Finally primary homes don't have any capital gains tax on sale (or at least not up to a pretty high limit). So this whole discussion is irrelevant. Ordinary people can always sell their "biggest asset" without paying much in tax.