I understand that and agree.
I was just looking for clarity on Fermion's post as to whether he is taking about taxable or tax-deferred accounts.
I was thinking a little of both. Doing some rollovers from IRA to roth to fill in the 10% tax bracket, taking some capital gains by selling shares of a index, perhaps with a 50% cost basis, and then of course whatever dividends and interest you might have.
With a 60/40 stock/bond $1,500,000 portfolio you might have $10,000 to $15,000 of dividends in your taxable portion (assuming you mostly keep bonds in the tax deferred or Roth)
Say you had $10,000 in dividends and needed $25,000 more to live on. You sell $15,000 of SPY, cash in a CD for $10,000. If your cost basis is $7500 in the SPY stock then you have a taxable income of $17,500. It might make sense to do some IRA to Roth conversions because for a couple the standard deduction is around $12,000 plus the exemptions of $8000 = $20,000.
Before ACA you might have converted up to a MAGI of $40,000 or more because of low or zero taxes on cap gains and dividends, but now ACA is a lot more important than taxes.