The paradox of "death tax" vs. social spending

[IrateCitizen]

Most conservatives like to rail against what they call the "death tax". They somehow feel that people who inherit wealth should be able to keep every penny of it, as if they deserve it.

Many of these same people will rant about social spending, especially programs for the poor. They believe that a person gets ahead in life by "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps", and that any public assistance helps create dependence.

My question is, how does the inheritance of vast sums of wealth help those on the receiving end to do something productive with their lives? If entitlements result in sloth, then would not those on the receiving end of vast inheritances be the most sloth of all?

Any answers would be appreciated.

[ret5hd]

1. It is obvious that you just don't understand...

Those who inherit wealth are the products of a superior gene line...this is obvious if you think of it. They will not be slothful, this wealth will be dutifully tended and cultivated so as to bring more riches to the even further refined genes of the next generation.

On the other hand, the genes of those who receive handouts are just as obviously defective. any chance of refining the genes of that group will have to come about as the result of social darwinism.

I hope i have made things clear to you.

</sarcasm>

[maggrwaggr]

2. I got two words to justify the inheritance tax:

Paris Hilton

[denverbill]

4. ROFLMAO!

Boy, what a perfect way to sum it up.

I'm going to have to remember that:)

[maggrwaggr]

23. Steal it. Use it. Repeat.

If we had any Democratic leaders I'd be happy if they'd use it.

:)

[Ellen Forradalom]

26. Oh hell yeah.

She's a one-woman justification for confiscatory taxation.

[tom_paine]

3. The short answer: Doublethink is a way of life for these people

Orwell, quite accurately and prophetically, in light of Imperial Amerika 2003, defined Doublethink as the ability to hold two completely contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time with no problem.

Busheviks, particularly their followers, brainwashed now for decades with Goebbels v2.0, are perhaps the most capable of this since real Totalitarians like Nazis or Commies.

Therefore, such considerations as you quite correctly point out are simply brushed aside by unthinking automatons...

[kentuck]

5. Poverty is a terrible trap. It is not easy to escape.

Social spending is not meant to give a person extra money to invest or to save or to have enough for a bus ticket out of town or to pay for the rent once you get out of town. It is meant for immediate survival. That is not something a person of inherited wealth will ever have to experience. He can afford not to be "slothful".

Not so with the person in poverty that is receiving some sort of financial aid. The social spending only keeps the cycle going - it does not remove the cycle. It causes the person to be discouraged and apathetic and removed from society in general. It is defined as "slothful" by others that are not in his shoes.

If a person in poverty works hard and makes it to the "middle class", he has come much farther than the person of inherited wealth that maintains his millions. If the same person had started with the same amount of inherited wealth, chances are he would have much more than the majority of people that inherit money.

[Isome]

7. WHAT?!!

1) Social spending isn't designed to remove the cycle of poverty. It's to assist in people with their immediate needs, like food and medical assistance for adults and children. Poor people will always be around, and it will always be a society's responsibility to ensure they're not hungry, while others are over-full. Poverty is caused by a myriad of reasons, the least likely reason is sloth. 2) Social spending doesn't cause dispair, poverty and hopelessness do. Social spending is sometimes the only hope people in abject poverty have. 3)Some 'trust fund babies' are the MOST self-indulgent, unempathetic, apathetic & lazy people around. Not all, but some epitomize SLOTH.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. Poverty is indeed a trap; so is ignorance

And just how do you think people in dire poverty are supposed to lift themselves up by their bootstraps when they don't even have the wardrobe to go to a job interview? the bus fare into the city, or back home?

what about the children who, through no fault of their own, haven't enough nutritious food to eat, whose empty bellies growl at them all day in school so that they can't concentrate on their studies?

too often, I think, the right wing has brainwashed us to think that the road out of poverty is one that begins when a person turns 18 and is able to make her/his own life decisions. Sadly, however, many have already had those decisions made for them long before they reach legal voting age.

I would respond to each point in your post, but i've spent more than my allotted DU time already on refuting another right wing myth.


thanking my comrades JanMichael, Isome, and a few others who I hope will not feel slighted because I haven't looked up their names,

I remain,

The DUer known as

Tansy Gold

[Killarney]

6. Conservatives = Hypocrits

They say, "we can't send money to people in Africa we have starving people in America!" Then five minutes later say, "I don't want my hard earned tax dollars to go to welfare/food stamps/WIC! Screw them!"

Not to mention that they are pro-life, yet pro death penalty.

Oh, and that they are all moral Christians yet at the same time bloodthirsty warmongers.

Hypocrasy abound.

[beyurslf]

9. the "pro-life yet anti death penalty" just doesn't work

They will say the same about us. We want to legalize killing babies and keep alive those convicted of killing adults.

[Cleita]

10. There's all kinds of ways to avoid inheritance tax.

The most common is giving away the bulk of your estate in living trusts while you are still alive. Joint tenancy is another way. So the wealthy shouldn't really gripe about the taxes on what is left to be taxed.

[YNGW]

12. Actually, one of the most common ways...

...is the purchase of life insurance.

Buy a million dollar policy over ten years, pay $100K a yr, and at the end of of the policy, were the person to die in that 10th year, you get your million back tax free.

[SheilaT]

16. Actually, depending on your age

a million dollar second to die policy costs a LOT less than $100k per year.

[Turkw]

25. The book the 2% Solution talks about this, and Bill Gate's father has a

book supporting the inheritance tax

[YNGW]

11. I got a different take.

Most RWers I know would agree that the money people accumulate over their lifetime has already been taxed and the "death tax" just re-taxes money that has already been taxed. Their explanation is more involved that that, and I can't cover all the bases, but that's essentially it.

As far as "social spending", the viewpoint I've heard most is that they believe private owned charities are more cost-effective. I think a combination of both government and private working together would be a good thing. The one problem I have with the government doing it all is this; It's too easy for the common man to see someone in need and say "I pay my taxes and the government will take care of that person", rather than taking it upon ourselves to do what we can as individuals. How many have slipped through the cracks because it's seen as the governments responsibility to take care of them and not our own? There's a balance to be struck.

[Tansy_Gold]

14. :::::::::sigh::::::::::

The rightwingers you know might agree with that reasoning, but they would be wrong. So are you.

Much of the value of a large estate (over $1 million) may not consist of previously taxed income. It may consist of capital gains that have not been taxed at all. My parents bought a small house in 1951 and paid $16,000 for it. By 2000, when that house came on the market again, it sold for $175,000. Had I inherited it -- I did not; it had been sold long ago -- the $159,000 increase in value would never have been taxed at all.

A case that made the news about two years ago involved a man who inherited a sizeable bundle of AT&T stock that his working class parents had acquired through dedicated saving and investing over a period of 60 years. The increased value of the stock over the purchase price had never been taxed, because the stock had never been sold.

Of course, the estate tax doesn't even kick in until the estate reaches a level only experienced by a tiny tiny portion of heirs. Had I inherited that little house my parents bought in 1951, I wouldn't have had to pay any tax; the exemption would cover it.

And the rationale (it's not logical at all) of already-taxed-income is utterly specious. Most of our taxes are on already taxed dollars one way or another anyway. We pay income tax on our income, then use what's left over to buy groceries on which we pay tax or gasoline on which we pay tax or car payments which include tax. It goes on and on and on. That's the way our tax system works. It doesn't tax MONEY, it taxes INCOME, SALES, TRANSACTIONS. it doesn't care how many times those dollars have been taxed before; each transfer is a new transaction, fresh for the taxing.

Why am I repeating all this? Go to the other DU thread on the Estate Tax and read it. And stop falling for rightwing, feudalistic bullshit.

[YNGW]

18. Tansy_Gold

>The rightwingers you know might agree with that reasoning, but they would be wrong. So are you.

Sweetheart, I never mentioned my opinion on the inheritance tax. Why do you presume to state my position when I never expressed it?

>Much of the value of a large estate (over $1 million) may not consist of previously taxed income. It may consist of capital gains ....

I already explained that. See:

>>Their explanation is more involved that that, AND I CAN'T COVER ALL THE BASES, ....<<

>Why am I repeating all this? Go to the other DU thread on the Estate Tax and read it. And stop falling for rightwing, feudalistic bullshit.

Start reading what I wrote and you won't need to do this. Your post was a waste of time.

If you want to address something, address the issue of how people, upon seeing that certain issues are regarded as "the governments problem, I pay my taxes", will allow things to slip through the cracks.

[Tansy_Gold]

19. The implication of your subject line. . . .

. .. .was that you agreed with the sentiments expressed by the rightwingers you know.

I addressed what I saw as the errors in that reasoning, whether theirs or yours.

By covering only ONE base, you left major issues out of the discussion and therefore implied a very different conclusion. And since the direction of the thread had veered into the topic of the validity of the inheritance tax, I addressed that issue. Are you suggesting that by merely mentioning that there were other explanations you precluded any of the rest of us from bringing them up?

As other posters have pointed out, if the "private" charities -- by which I presume (silly me!) you mean faith-based organizations and other NGOs -- have been unable to eliminate poverty and need, do we just shrug and say, "Oh, well, that's life!" and walk away? or do we look for other answers?

Traditionally, one other answer has been the coordination of efforts with and through various governmental agencies. This has become more common as the population has become more mobile and also as the gap between rich and poor has widened. The rich are better able to insulate themselves -- think gated communities -- from contact with and even sight of the poor. The dwindling middle class finds itself with more and more of the burden in a slowly spiraling economic collapse. The rich pay fewer taxes and accumulate more wealth which is sucked out of the working and middle classes who are then additionally burdened with the care of the poor, either in their own families, through private charities, or in increased taxes that deplete their income and push them closer and closer to the poverty level.

As the middle and working classes lose discretionary income, their giving to charity decreases, thus exacerbating the spiral. As the rich consolidate their wealth and remove it from the economic cycle, the gap widens further.

As the instrument of the greater community, a taxation system that removes a portion of excessive unearned wealth from the heirs of the very wealthy maintains the economic health of the whole, not only by providing a mechanism for relieving poverty directly by also by maintaining the economic energy of the classes that actually produce and earn, through their labor, the wealth.

[YNGW]

20. Reply

>"The implication of your subject line was that you agreed with the sentiments expressed by the rightwingers you know.

I never implied anything. You presumed in an area I never addressed. Let me help you. It's real easy to figure out, because I'll say something like "It's my opinion that..." Otherwise, I'm just stating something, in this case, what I understood the RW position to be.

In fact, if you read further, you'll find I believe a combination of both private and gov't working in conjunction would be preferable.

>Are you suggesting that by merely mentioning that there were other explanations you precluded any of the rest of us from bringing them up?

No, I'm not suggesting anything. I telling you that I never gave my opinion on the inheritance tax, nor did I imply that I agreed with the RWers, but rather you took what you *thought* you saw and ran with it. Don't. There's no reason for it.

>As other posters have pointed out, if the "private" charities -- by which I presume (silly me!) you mean faith-based organizations and other NGOs -- have been unable to eliminate poverty and need, do we just shrug and say, "Oh, well, that's life!" and walk away? or do we look for other answers?

Exactly my point. It's too simple for people to say "That homeless person is the job of the government. I pay my taxes to take care of that." See, that's too easy. Somehow, we need to instill in people that they are their brother's keeper. Even with gov't programs and private orgs, people will slip through the cracks if we as humans don't care enough to help our fellowman.

As far as the middle-class stuff, it's to the advantage of even the mega-rich to preserve the middle class, otherwise the gulliotine shows up. Of course, King Louie gets a permanent haircut, and 30 years later you get Napeleon.

In the future, should you require further clarification of what I'm saying, just ask. It's a lot easier.

[Tactical Progressive]

27. Stop being coy.

I got the same impression from your subject line that she did.

You say 'should you require further clarification of what I'm saying, just ask.' Since this is a discussion on the inheritance tax, I'm asking, what is your perspective?

[CBHagman]

17. But those of us without inheritances are double-taxed, too.

Let's see: I pay Social Security tax, state tax, county tax, Medicare tax, and federal tax. That doesn't free me up from paying sales tax, even though my wages technically have already been taxed. And if I give a tip to hairdresser, cabbie or a waiter, that person still has to pay tax on that income. Yet that isn't double taxation to our friends in the "Death Tax" repeal crowd.

As for the business of both the government and the private sector taking care of the needy, we have had that system for years, and faith-based organizations ALREADY received federal funds. It didn't start with the Bush administration.

The current system, volunteer, private-sector, or government-run, however, doesn't reach all of the desperate people out there. There are very, very long waiting lists, for example, for Section 8 housing in my county, where housing prices are sky-high and affordable housing is quite rare. By all means pay your taxes, volunteer, and make donations, but don't knock what little help the government is providing, and don't decide exactly how many volunteering and donation burdens your fellow taxpayers should carry. There are a lot of people out there busting their butts working two jobs, rearing children, and caring for aging parents. Most of us aren't swimming in cash OR free time.

[Nikia]

13. I wonder about some people's attitudes

I remember reading some advice column. A rich old woman was thinking about giving $50,000 each to her gardner and her housekeeper who had worked for her for several years after she died. She wrote about them and their families and how she thought that the money would better themselves. She had no children and was giving the rest of the money to some other organizations. The columnist said that giving them that much money would do more harm than good and how it would discourage them from finding other employment. I thought that was rather snobbish for the columnist to assume. The same columnist would probably have no problem with her giving all her money to her children if she had them.

[Bush loves Jiang]

15. The death tax is fine the way it is...

It only takes money from the very rich, doesn't it?

[ParticipatoryDem]

22. Yest it only takes money from the filthy rich

I don't know what the cap is but I'm never going to get there I'm sure.

[ParticipatoryDem]

21. Good question for Kerry's wife

I'm sure she gave all the money to the needy and lives a normal life like we do and struggles for cash at the end of the month.

[Pattib]

24. There is no way that you are not a Republican.

I know you said you were a moderate Dem but in 95% of your posts you bash Clinton and democratic policies while touting the Republican agenda. You take umbrage when posters speak negatively of this administration. I don't get it? If you don't support anything or anyone democrat then why come here and post?