If you were a politician...

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I like politicus's ideas a lot. The fact that they further complicate the tax code is, to my mind, more than made up for by the fundamental fairness of what she's suggesting. I'd perhaps support higher actual rates than she would; I don't know.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

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I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

I'm saying I find it unfair that some have to work hard for little while some don't have to work at all. Do you find that fair?

"Fairness" alone does not merit a policy proposal. Any system that prevents one from bequeathing his earnings to the people of his choice is unjust.

What's 'unjust' is that one person can end his or her life the proud owner of a dozen mansions while another ends it under a highway overpass. No one human being is somehow worth that much more to the world than any other.

It's not that your children deserve that money less than you do or less than strangers do. It's that you didn't 'deserve' that kind of money in the first place, because nobody does. I don't think anybody here is seriously proposing imposing confiscatory estate taxes on just enough of an inheritance for your children to take a few nice long-ish vacations and pay off a house and a car.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

I'm saying I find it unfair that some have to work hard for little while some don't have to work at all. Do you find that fair?

"Fairness" alone does not merit a policy proposal. Any system that prevents one from bequeathing his earnings to the people of his choice is unjust.

What's 'unjust' is that one person can end his or her life the proud owner of a dozen mansions while another ends it under a highway overpass.

I find it intriguing that most leftists seem to find both individuals living under a highway overpass to be a preferable alternative.

That's a completely specious assertion and I hope you either know it or are stupid because all other alternatives are so unpleasant to contemplate.

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It could be argued that the output of an economy as a whole is by definition not very 'productive' if it doesn't have mechanisms in place to ensure that all or almost all of its members are at the very least not at risk of dying of exposure, starvation, or easily treatable diseases. The actual outcome is that distribution is semirigid and determined by the vagaries of chance at best and at worst the interests of people who benefited in previous rounds of distribution and used that to build for themselves an unjustifiably secure edifice. And again, asserting that (mainstream) leftists want distribution of wealth to be determined by 'political clout' is such a gross and obvious calumny that I honestly hope you're speaking in either insincerity or ignorance when you say it. You can claim, with some justification in some cases, that that's the result, but if you're going to say that it's what we 'prefer', allow me to assure you that you are wrong.

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Whomever paid that human being the salary over many years necessary to acquire that level of wealth would beg to differ. [/quote]

Do you sincerely believe that most people who are that wealthy become so by being paid salaries? Even if that were the case, does the worry ever strike you that the people who make these determinations--the employers, the owners, the people who struck various motherlodes in previous rounds of the half-random, half-rigged distribution game--might be on occasion mistaken about the worth of the people around them?

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This point would only further solidify the idea that favoring inheritance taxes is motivated by envy more than anything else.[/quote]

'Envy' is a disingenuous way to describe it. Concern for people who go through life without many resources, and relative lack (not complete lack) of concern for people who would be very well-heeled in all but the most radically redistributionist systems imaginable (in other words, who would remain rich under any policy politically possible to institute in any Western country) is more like it. Even if we accept that 'envy' is an even remotely fair characterization of this concern, it's far from immediately obvious that a very poor person is inherently unjustified in being envious of a very rich person.

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To the extent that that's a fair question to ask about a capitalist class not composed primarily of sociopaths--which, okay, fine, that's somewhat unfair, I get that not everybody is ruled by their better angels all or even most of the time--it's part of the reason why estate and income taxes are better ideas than maximum estate, so the rhetorical question at the end of this quoted section partially answers the objection that you raise at the beginning of it.
 

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So your argument is essentially that we can't redistribute wealth because rich people are petulant hostage-takers who will take their ball and go home if we try, thereby crashing the entire economy. I can certainly see how one would come to that conclusion, although I doubt it's the one you were trying to reach.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I was going to address this in some detail once again but I realized that my responses to pretty much all of the points that you raise--except the last, which I concede, to some extent, although I'd counsel that if you're concerned about people drawing such conclusions from what you are saying you should perhaps do more to anticipate that not everybody gives capitalists the benefit of the doubt to the extent that you do, and also quit making up ridiculous straw-men of your own--were just variations on pointing out that (mainstream) leftists, apparently unlike you, are concerned with matters of degree (which includes marginal utility, a concept with which this installment of your argument for the idea that redistributionist politics is motivated by envy illustrates you have particular difficulty) and think such matters are a relevant series of considerations in this sort of discussion. This is what makes it disingenuous to claim that we want to have everybody live under a bridge or to make policy based emotively on envy or to completely destroy the profit motive (we may or may not wish we could do the latter, but we by and large recognize that it isn't possible to do so) or whatever else. Some consequences are acceptable and some are not. The motivation for leftist sentiment is believing that an economy that could be argued to be structurally somewhat moribund and an upper class that grumbles about not being respected in its rights to property that morally speaking it doesn't really deserve all of anyway is a more acceptable set of consequences than an underclass that can't reliably afford to live its life when there is manifestly enough money available in the economy to fix that. That's all. Clearly you don't share that belief and I despair of convincing you to respect it, but at least be aware that flippantly reducing it to a straw man based on a shallow definition of covetousness has the effect primarily of making you look like something of a presumably unintended self-caricature.