9/11 Did Not Happen During The Bush!

[Demosthenes11]

When a person dies with a middle class net worth (these days we'll say that's under a million dollars) you're correct and I will agree with you all the way. But a person dies with many multiples of millions of dollars in net worth, even when it is taxed at a high rate (30-50%) their child's life WILL be MUCH BETTER than their own because they will have started off with a HUGE advantage already. The ONLY reason to do so is consolidation of wealth, and by extension consolidation of power.

You have to understand this - at a certain point of accumulated wealth a estate tax is necessary. Without it, kings and serfs are created.

what's the incentive to work past making 2 mil a year then? I understand they can use it in their own lifetime but people are a lot less willing to work and build up companies if they know it's all going to go to the government

[Olo401]

what's the incentive to work past making 2 mil a year then?

they can use it in their own lifetime .... to work and build up companies

... and raise the quality of their life and of their family while they are alive.

Oh yeah, and I suppose they can donate their excess to a worthy cause. How many billions of his excess fortune has Bill Gates put into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the years, and other charities as well? Warren Buffet has already put into his will that his fortune will be donated entirely to charities. And did you happen to see that despite having royally fucked up his life, Tiger Woods found time to donate a few million dollars to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake. There are many people in this world, rich and poor, who find virtue or meaning to their life in helping others. The reasons can be personal, or religious, or simply because they don't need that much money in excess for themselves when countless other people in this world have less than nothing.

There's also one more reason I have that I only bring out in rare instances (so by all means feel honored that I got out the big guns here lol) that's based in, of all schools of thought, Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Yes, a person who works hard, gets their schooling, advances their career and builds their own fortune is absolutely entitled to the rewards that it provides. Their kinsmen did nothing to earn such wealth. They showed no ability to justify the need for such wealth, and even if they do show ability later in life that still does not entitle them to what someone else created. It is more logical and more "selfish" to revert such wealth to its source - the government authority that issued it in the first place.

[Demosthenes11]

i can tell you right now this argument will go nowhere as we are looking at this from completely opposite ends and have a very different view on government and human nature

[Kuya]

I don't think that a further centralization of wealth is what we need now, of all times, demos. Especially when the political system is so sensitive to money, at this moment.

[Olo401]

i can tell you right now this argument will go nowhere as we are looking at this from completely opposite ends and have a very different view on government and human nature

The problem here isn't that we're looking at opposite ends. It's that you close your mind to the very idea that there's another end.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

No taxation without respiration. Seriously though, you scare me Olo. I think liberal arguments can be summed up like this. "I'm more entitled to the money you earned than you are." And of course there's no negative consequences.

[Charismatic]

"I'm more entitled to the money you earned than you are."

I don't really care much about this argument but I feel the need to point out that this isn't true.
In this case you are dead so you are entitled to nothing.

What he is actually saying is that he and others are more entitled to it than your kinsmen.
Don't try to act as if I am agreeing with that because I never said anything of the sort, I'm just pointing out the flaw in your wording.

[Yuri-G]

No taxation without respiration. Seriously though, you scare me Olo. I think liberal arguments can be summed up like this. "I'm more entitled to the money you earned than you are." And of course there's no negative consequences.

I don't think either side can be summed up that easily, to be fair. Not in any sort of productive debate at least.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

I don't really care much about this argument but I feel the need to point out that this isn't true.
In this case you are dead so you are entitled to nothing.

What he is actually saying is that he and others are more entitled to it than your kinsmen.
Don't try to act as if I am agreeing with that because I never said anything of the sort, I'm just pointing out the flaw in your wording.

I was speaking generally, not about the death tax. If I was talking about the death tax I would have said, "I'm more entitled to your money than the people you wish to give it to."

[Olo401]

SwampdonkeyPLD;3397338]I'm more entitled to the money you earned than you are.

See, Swampy understands the point I'm trying to make.. why should your kin be entitled to your excess when they didn't do a thing to earn it?

What he is actually saying is that he and others are more entitled to it than your kinsmen.

No, what I'm saying is NO ONE is entitled to it, so it should go back to the authority who issued the currency to be recycled into the economy.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

See, Swampy understands the point I'm trying to make.. why should your kin be entitled to your excess when they didn't do a thing to earn it?

EVERY RIGHT-WINGERS POINT EXACTLY...just take out the kin part

[Orden]

Elizabeth Lambert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNmPybFK2_o

[Leif]

See, Swampy understands the point I'm trying to make.. why should your kin be entitled to your excess when they didn't do a thing to earn it?

Because the person who earned the money can give it to whomever he or she wants. If I become a billionaire, I will have put in enough work, energy, and effort into society to compensate for the fact that my kids will never be working.

That is how capitalism works. You get what you're worth.

No, what I'm saying is NO ONE is entitled to it, so it should go back to the authority who issued the currency to be recycled into the economy.

Wait, when someone dies, they can't even decide how to spend their own money. Who are you to tell them they can't give it to their relatives. If the person has made say, enough income for his child to live without working, the person who made the money has essentially put the work into providing for that child.

[setzer]

No, what I'm saying is NO ONE is entitled to it, so it should go back to the authority who issued the currency to be recycled into the economy.

people like you really scare me.

do you have any idea what this country is and what it was founded on? are you really so helpless that you want/need the government to control every aspect of your life?

there are several communist countries around the globe right now. you should go check them out, and please, don't come back....

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

people like you really scare me.

do you have any idea what this country is and what it was founded on? are you really so helpless that you want/need the government to control every aspect of your life?

there are several communist countries around the globe right now. you should go check them out, and please, don't come back....

Yeah and we're one of them. Good job at not knowing your own country lol

[Cadsuane]

It's funny. Whenever I see anarcho communists or whatever talking about something I want to say how much of an idiot Marx is, and whenever I see conservatives and libertarians talking I get the urge to talk about how right he was.

[Olo401]

people like you really scare me.

do you have any idea what this country is and what it was founded on?

I'll cut you off right there because the rest of your pathetic reply doesn't deserve being dignified with a quote.

To answer your question - Yes, and this principle was one of them. From WikiAnswers:

Certainly several of the "founding fathers" thought a great deal about the problem of inherited wealth, and about how taxation might be used to reduce social inequality. In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce "the enormous inequality" between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of "silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
....
A tax on estate receipts was instituted by Congress in 1797, during the presidency of John Adams, to pay for a build-up of the US navy

1797. For over 200 years this country has had an Estate Tax, almost since its founding. And you claim it's not an American founding principle?

From an essay at Responsible Wealth:

The heart of (Thomas) Paine’s famous pamphlet (Common Sense) contains a withering criticism of hereditary government. This critique extends through all his works. “All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.” “Hereditary succession . . . is in its nature an absurdity, because it is impossible to make wisdom hereditary . . .. History informs us that the son of Solomon was a fool.” “To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second . . . is an insult and an imposition on posterity.”

Later in life, Paine extended this critique of inherited political power to a critique of inherited economic power. It is important to remember that Paine distrusted governments, disliked taxes, and heartily approved of late night tea parties in Boston Harbor! He opens Common Sense with an attack not only on monarchy, but also on government itself. “Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.”

That last paragraph is particularly important. Like many of the founding fathers, Paine was a libertarian though more extreme than his contemporaries. Yet even he realized that hereditary wealth was a severe threat to individual liberty.

Son, the next time you want to question the patriotism of someone else you better make DAMN SURE you know what the fuck you're talking about. Those of us who actually KNOW WHAT THIS COUNTRY WAS FOUNDED ON do not stand by and let you get away with an insult.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

You left out this quote olo.

As Jefferson also said, "To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

[Rhinox]

I thought I proved already that arguing tax code with faux libertarian tea bagger would get people nowhere. Because no matter how many quotes or how many constitional articles you present they will always come back with "well, thats not what he meant! what he meant to say was..."

[setzer]

Olo... What I said is you scare me for thinking that all of one's wealth should be taken by the state upon death, which is what you said is "logical". Please go reread, I'll wait.

I never said shit about a simple tax on ones assets upon death, but please, continue arguing with yourself. ^^

If you really are saying one of the founding principles of this country is taking all of one's wealth when you die and reabsorbing that wealth and assets into the federal banks to be redistributed to those they deem fit, then ya, I'm calling you a commie.

Also, big bold type is scary. We all know you're a tough guy, no reason to flaunt it. ; ;