For those of you who think the tax cut was only for the rich.

Pretty much everythiong else could be on a pay as you go basis, as far as I am concerned. Roads can have toll booths, schools can charge tuition, etc

Excellent. So the rich get richer by having access to more & better basic services; the poor muddle along. Good strategy for building a strong economic system.

 

Why wait until you die? You can transfer $10,000 per year per child. Your wife can also transfer $10,000 per year per child.

On anything more than the $10,000 your child will be taxed. I suppose that you would want to do away with that tax too.

BTW, that are some tricks to postpone estate taxes, like setting up a generation skipping trust fund for your grandchildren.

 

I also believe eliminating the death tax will become another route to avoid capital gains tax. That is money if the person was alive they would have to pay upon cashing in there investment but not if it is passed on to descendents (say in 2009). In other words the death tax isn't always double taxation, sometimes it is the first taxation on accumulated wealth. However I think there may also be some funky rules with the stepped up basis of inherited investments that came with the recent bills, maybe an accountant or tax attorney can fully explain.

I might support a bill that eliminates taxation on something like up to a 3 or 5 or 10 million dollar estate if they got rid of the trust fund loopholes and applied the same rules for capital gains as if the person was alive. But sorry I would never justify Bill Gates or Sam Walton passing all his wealth w/o taxation--the fact of the matter is a substantial portion of American citizens helped create the economic conditions where Bill and Sam could generate that much wealth.

 

This amuses me greatly. In most of the world, a single payer health care system is a very, very moderate idea. In the US, it is somewhat leftist. But only in a distinctly American context.

You can only characterize it as radical, however, if you think that the rest of the West is somehow suffering from dementia. You really think that Americans are simply oh-so-much smarter than the rest of the world?

A friend of mine from Germany described our last election as "two right-center candidates duking meaningless differences out." Pretty much sums up the larger picture...

 

Didn't anyone tell you Ref, it is okay to steal from rich, white males. The system is set up as a good ol' boys network so people like Gates can't help but succeed.

 

Just as counterpoint, many like myself do NOT want to "stick it to the rich" (unless the rich in a certain instance happens to be a gorgeous woman with open slots in her will, etc.). I want the rich to keep every penny they have, when:

* every American who works can afford decent housing and buy enough food to feed their families.
* we have a K-12 education system that can't go toe-to-toe with the best in the world.
* every American has some decent common-denominator of health care (i.e. something better than nothing for everybody -- we're a long way from that).
* the nation's mentally disabled have proper care provided for them by the government or some other enormous collaboration of American citizens.

Oh, also, StupidMoniker:

 

B-Bob,

I see your and raise you a . If you don't think that many Americans have no problem stealing from rich, mostly white people, I just don't know what to tell you.

 

LMAO! I see your and raise you a . Nice one.

Anyway, I feel like we're on different planets here. I wish you could describe for me these "many" who sit giggling, licking their chops, and stealing from the rich. Are you talking about people on welfare? That isn't very fun. Are you talking about people who work two shifts at Mickey D's and still can't earn enough to pay the rent? Or, do you picture a kind of comfortable middle class that likes taking money from the rich in order to ... ... buy a bigger TV? I'm being very serious. I think I would understand where you're coming from if I could share your picture of these "many" who want to steal.

Finally, the racial angle doesn't seem to be the point, really, unless we want to start a new tangent. Don't tell me the would-be thiefs are all non-white. Please don't.

 

First, I didn't mean to imply that the theives are non-white. In fact, the rich are not all white either, they are just the ones that are pointed to as examples because there is not a lot of "old money" among minorities. Since the context was the estate tax, that was where I was coming from.
The people that I am talking about are not the cartoonish hate list that people think conservatives have (welfare moms, commies, and Bill Clinton, oh my). Your typical liberal will do fine. I am talking about anyone who wants to have a lot of government programs, but thinks that the tax burden to pay for these programs should be placed on the rich. In effect, I do picture a kind of comfortable middle class that likes taking money from the rich in order to buy a bigger TV. They want a very high tax rate on high income people to pay for programs, not necessarily to help them selves even, so they don't have too.
Soon I will probably be in that middle class neighborhood, and I hope one day to move into the high-income level, but I don't think I should have oppressive taxes levied on me for doing so.
So what I mean is all of the people who think that just because someone is rich, they shouldn't mind that they have to be so heavily taxed, especially when an argument is made or implied that they didn't earn their money, are in some way stealing. I do not believe that we should significantly redistribute wealth, call me a capitalist, a racist, a facist, whatever.
As is obvious by the length and tone of my post I was making an off the cuff sarcastic comment, but I stand by it, though I regret using the white man part as I feel part of my message was lost.

 

StupidMoniker,

Fair enough -- I get it now. Thanks for clarifying the image. And I don't think you're a racist or fascist for not wanting redistribution of wealth. We can simply disagree on the best, most just course of action.

I think I am, by the way, exactly the middle class guy in your image. I'm not buying a bigger TV, but I want the wealthy to pay proportionally more for my ideals than me. While that may seem like a difficult position, I don't resent what I do pay (which is quite a lot, from my perspective), and I claim I would happily pay a higher tax rate if I was wealthy. As for estate tax, I am barely, just barely, starting to become emotionally persuaded (heavens! I am such a ROOKIE!) by Ref's argument based on a hypothetical, parental perspective.

 

Soon I will probably be in that middle class neighborhood, and I hope one day to move into the high-income level, but I don't think I should have oppressive taxes levied on me for doing so.

As you get into the high-income levels, you will find your net tax rate decreases because you will no longer be paying a 13.7% Social Security tax on your higher wages.

The tax "burden" is far higher in terms of real-world impact on a middle class family than a high-income family.

 

Your argument is not sound in a democratic society (emphasis on little d). Look, there will always be an inherent conflict between capitalism and democracy and when the decision comes, I'd rather err on the side of democracy.

Liberal? It's no accident that the two people I quoted are not Marx and Veblen, but Carnegie and Buffet, hardly Bolsheviks, much less Democrats (big D). Thomas Paine, no friend of taxes, was against inherited wealth almost as much as we was against inherited power because he recognized the two are linked. The dangers accumulated multi-generational wealth pose to democracy is the primary reason Jefferson was against primogeniture and favored the division of estates.

Archaic? Teddy Roosevelt first proposed our estate tax and it was implemented by Wilson (giving new meaning to the Progressive Era). In his proposal, Teddy said this: “It is most desirable to encourage thrift and ambition, and a potent source of thrift and ambition is the desire on the part of the breadwinner to leave his children well off. This object can be attained by making the tax very small on moderate amounts of property.” What Teddy's saying is that if you're a family farmer (or a moderately successful attorney), you should expect to pass that along. His estate tax was aimed to put "a constantly increasing burden on the inheritance of those swollen fortunes which it is certainly of no benefit to this country to perpetuate." In Teddy's day, that meant the House of Morgan and others of similar wealth... in todays terms, that translates into less than 2% of all estates.

The estate tax was never conceived (or administered) as a revenue stream for government. It was instead, an equalizer to give those coming up a shot at wealth and to prevent those that have it from stagnating the system. (I haven't looked up the revenues produced from the estate tax, but my guess is it's no more than 1%.)

The estate tax is not a tax on death. It is a tax on the unearned income of your heirs. You failed to address my lottery example. What's the difference between winning a lottery by picking the right Powerball combo and winning by being born with the last name of Rockefeller? If you combine GOP stances on welfare and the estate tax, the logical conclusion is that all people should take responsibility, work when they can, and contribute to the good of society unless you are the offspring of a family that finds itself in the upper 1 1/2% (approx) of wealth. That is truly distasteful.

(I have more to say, particularly on the societal benefits of keeping the estate tax, but my daughter's yelling for a bedtime story. Later.)

 

Apologies all, after a very busy day at work -- you know, the place where I work hard to earn money so that I can give more of it to non-productive members of society via taxes -- I have missed most of this thread. I try to avoid the political threads when I'm busy at work in hopes of actually being productive.

As most of you know by now, the belief of equality of income as a social goal is not one of my main priorities. There are many reasons why inequality of income is perfectly rational in a well-functioning society. A distinction must be drawn between pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. For instance: For two years of my life, I chose to work in investment banking. I worked very long hours and received a healthy paycheck. My benefit was measured in dollars. Another person could prefer to work less hours and spend the other hours following the Rockets. Both activities would contribute to this person's benefit. Would it be fair to redistribute income from me to the other person, when that person makes the conscious decision to accept a different point on the labor/leisure frontier? No. If I invest my savings at a 20% rate of return, and a person with the same amount of savings only invests at a 5% return, should some of my wealth be redistributed to the person with the lower return? Why reward his mistake? If a doctor or lawyer invests $100,000 of their own money in their education and then makes a good paycheck upon graduating, should this person have his income redistributed to a factory worker who went to work straight out of high school?

These examples illustrate the point that inequality of income should exist in a society where individuals exercise the freedom to choose their own course in life. Why tax individuals who succeed more than those who fail? Would not a more fair system be to tax everyone the same percentage and thereby not punish success? Why are those in favor of income redistribution so readily inclined to denounce income inequalities very clearly attributable to merit?

As long as we live in a capitalist economic system where individuals exchange goods and services in mutually beneficial trades and payment is made in accordance with the assumed value of the product, income inequality will forever be inevitable. What we have witnessed in the US over time is the economically weak imposing punitive taxes on the economically strong -- thanks in large part to a huge disparity in voting power. This is a clear encroachment on the individual freedoms of the economically strong.

Taxes are levied for two purposes. 1) To raise money to fund government expenditures and 2) To redistribute money from the wealthy to the poor. Point #1 I see as a necessary evil. Point #2 I view as highly unfair for the reasons listed above. The government has no right to take money from me and give it to someone who has been rewarded less by the capitalism system -- a system which completely undermines status and introduces social mobility.

CASE CLOSED

 

<B>TJ</B>: You make a great argument and then take the wind out of it with that "Case Closed" stuff== hope you're having fun with it!

Whatever happened with that hot chick?

 

It's a great argument if you accept this one assumed equation.

pay = (universal constant) X (work done)

If only this were true... If only the richest people in the nation worked as hard as T_J did when he spent two years working his ass off trading or what-have-you. And if only everyone had access to the avenues that allow you to become a trader with a high salary... And if only everyone (like the bosses of the traders) actually had to work their asses off for the nation's largest salaries. I would very much enjoy that world. I think I would accept all the conservative taxation arguments in that world.

I am not trying to convince T_J of anything here; I know better. But I do owe him an apology. In a previous thread, I said attempting to argue with him was like tossing coins into a well and never hearing so much as a splash. That is completely inaccurate. What happens is another coin comes flying up out of the well in return. It is black on one side, white on the other, and has a picture of George Will on it. It may not work in parking meter, the clerks at 7-11 may not accept it, but it is what it is: logical, symmetrical, and stark. ... and it never ever has George Will smiling!