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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.