It is lower today because investment income is taxed at lower rates than income from working. I'm not talking about the '50s, I'm talking about modern America.
But any money has most likely already been taxed. Money you earned was taxed. When you buy something and pay a sales tax, it's being taxed again. When you buy gas and there's a tax on the gas (at least in CA) then it's taxed then as well. The closest parallel is that people who run companies may have earned the money they are using to pay employees. That money was taxed when they earned it, and now that it's transferring to another person it's being taxed again. So when money is transferred from one person to another taxing it, seems to be pretty normal and isn't a special case just for estate tax. Estate tax has even less taxation because of the high threshold that needs to be reached before its even taxed at all.
The Voodoo Economics argument was that if you lower the taxes on capital gains it would spur investments and grow jobs. The facts of the last 30 years have not borne this out. It was a lobbyist generated advocacy that was a win either way for the people that pay them. And all income is taxed at every exchange, "it's already been taxed" is not a credible argument for eliminating inheritance taxes. A very arguable point is that all incomes should be taxed equally, it's almost libertarian.
All money has been taxed before. Our system is based on taxing money that changes hands. Inheritance is no different than your boss giving you a raise. I think there should be some level of exemption but not at the level it is now.
Hard work isn't enough. There are many traps in life that will catch people of all income levels. The poor tend to fall in the traps more often, "self inflicted". If the rich wasn't rich, does that prevent the poor from falling over themselves?
Money solves a lot of the self inflicted traps though, not to mention shielding rich people from a majority of those traps to begin with.
Nobody is talking about taking all wealth away from the rich to the point that they aren't anymore. People are talking about slightly higher marginal tax rates, which will not take a wealthy person and bring them to a lower level of wealth.
It's just a jealousy thing, always has been. Failures get upset that some people weren't failures and they blame their problems on them. Somehow in the minds of losers, they think that their failure wasn't their fault if there were people in the world that had an easier go of it. Of course, that mentality is part of the reason they are a failure in the first place. If they spent as much energy and effort trying to succeed instead of worrying that maybe someone else had an easier path, they might be a success that losers whine about.
Classic Bobby with the most r****ded hot takes. Rich banks wreck our economy and we are mad BECAUSE WE ARE JEALOUS.
There are as many levels of motivation, capabilities, opportunities, complications and commitments, and sanity as there are people on the planet. Every human being's story is nuanced mix of all of them. There aren't any fix evaluations of failure and success for any of them either. Is enough money but no happiness a win or a fail?
Ah yes, let's blame the banks for not protecting r****ds from themselves. Expecting people to take responsibility for THEIR actions is way too much to ask apparently. What's funny is if banks DON'T give people money then people whine and b**** and blame the banks, if banks DO give people money and they take more than they can afford to pay back then people whine and b**** and blame the banks. A fool and his money are soon parted.
Bullsh!t, it is a greed thing, always has been. I haven't seen this kind of attitude expressed by anyone at any time. I have certainly seen people blame their problems on others, sometimes to the point of absurdity, but I don't hear people saying that the reason that they are poor is the result of the fact that someone else is rich. Bullsh!t again. There are certainly some losers who blame their losing on people other than themselves, I have a brother in law who fits this criteria. However, his blame game is pointed at the manager who didn't like him, the girlfriend who stopped putting up with his ****, or the motorist who ran into him when he was driving drunk. As bad as his blame game has been, even he has never once expressed that his losing was due to someone else being rich. If the wealthy spent their time and effort helping to assure a more equitable society rather than whining about "takers," "moochers," or blaming our fiscal woes on the minuscule percentage of the federal budget used to assist people who, for whatever reason, can't make ends meet, then maybe we could get over this rich versus poor lunacy and move forward in something like unison. Once again, you clearly show that you don't actually assess the situation honestly, you just regurgitate what some pundit has spoon fed you.
You can always count on Bobby for simple-minded thinking. Never ever does he have a nuanced opinion on anything, it's always strictly binary. Simpleton.
The banks paid off the rating agencies while they were shorting the loan packages they were promoting. It wasn't r****ded to believe rating agencies that are exactly charged with supplying reputable information until after it was proven they were lying. You need to up your meds today. I guess you can't watch The Big Short until it comes out on Netflix.
Company deducts employee wages from income, so in this example the money is not taxed twice. Lots of other examples where it is, though.
I get that, but at some point it was somebody's, probably the bosses income. So when it was the income that whoever it was that's paying others earned it, it was taxed.
The poor are mostly poor because of themselves. Baring extreme circumstances, there's zero reason anyone in America, who is really trying, to end up poor. People need to stop playing the victim role and take control of their own lives.
