On 12/22/2010 6:17 PM, Tom Gardner wrote:
id wrote in message
...
On 2010-12-22, Tom wrote:
All that wealth has been taxed already. The nose in the tent will
expand
to 100% death tax in short order if some have their way. It's simple
wealth
redistribution from the productive to the unproductive.

Any inheritance IS redistribution of wealth, from parents to
children. If both parents and children are productive persons, then
inheritance is distributing wealth from productive persons to
prductive. If the children are not productive, then inheritance means
distributing wealth from productive to unproductive.

Productive is a big word, too. I am productive when it comes to
computer programming. If, hypothetically, my parents owned a large
farm, then I would not be a productive owner of said farm. If I did
not sell it, the hypothetical farm would probably decline.

On balance, based on my economics education, I think that auctioning
off a part of an estate to the highest bidder, leads to more
productive use of the property than passing wholly to children, who
are essentially random persons (winners of the ovarian lottery) when
it comes to managing property.

Since taking 100% of the wealth at death is a too big deterrent to
saving, the golden middle probably lies somewhere in between taxing
all and taxing nothing. Personally, I think that the fairest tax is
somewhere under 50%, but close, I would settle on 45%.

Regular people, like you and me (yes I have seen your factory on
google maps and go to such factory auctions often), are not impacted by
current thresholds of estate taxes. Those somewhat above the
threshold, can do a lot to reduce their estate tax bill.

i

I think the death tax only applies to very unexpected deaths combined with
poor planning. Anybody with half a brain can avoid it completely. But in
general, I'm against politicians using confiscated wealth to buy the votes
of the unproductive leaches on society. Why not make the tax voluntary?
All liberals can donate all their wealth and that would offset conservatives
helping their families.




Sorry, but most Americans don't like the idea of great estates being
passed from one generation to future ones, which guarantees that an
enduring aristocratic class is created and maintained by passing
unearned wealth on to the lucky few who were related to someone who made
a lot of money in their life. Besides that, once you are dead you don't
have rights. Your money is not yours anymore. What happens to it is
decided by law. Children have limited rights to what their parents had
when alive. As Americans and part of the American legal system the
people have decided that if you have an estate, and only 2% do, then
that estate is subject to being taxed. If you actually knew what happens
when you allow wealth to be handed down from one generation to the next
you would think differently. They did that for hundreds of years in
Europe and all it did was cause a lot of class problems. Problems we
don't have because we would rather break up the big estates when we can.
It sounds real good to be against the government "taking" estate money
but in the real world it's a lot better than letting billionaires set up
their relatives for generations to come. That may be good for the lucky
few but it's bad for the country.

Hawke