Taxed in Life & Taxed in Death aka Estate Tax .

[The Frankish Reich]

You know what's depressing? The only Presidential candidates who've proposed a radical reworking of how the government funds itself in the last quarter century are fringe guys Steve Forbes and Herman Cain. Neither of them were even going to get elected (and for good reasons), but you'd think that some mainstream candidate would've picked up on at least some of the various ideas kicking around the think tanks and universities? I guess we are doomed to this cycle in which every Republican administration cuts the estate and capital gains taxes and the highest marginal rate, and every Democratic administration immediately undoes those cuts.

 

[SoCal Deek]

1 minute ago, The Frankish Reich said:

You know what's depressing? The only Presidential candidates who've proposed a radical reworking of how the government funds itself in the last quarter century are fringe guys Steve Forbes and Herman Cain. Neither of them were even going to get elected (and for good reasons), but you'd think that some mainstream candidate would've picked up on at least some of the various ideas kicking around the think tanks and universities? I guess we are doomed to this cycle in which every Republican administration cuts the estate and capital gains taxes and the highest marginal rate, and every Democratic administration immediately undoes those cuts.

 

You're just now figuring this out?  The two party system has devolved into the two candidates jsut promising that they'll do the opposite of the other guy.  Nobody is trying to make anything better.  It's all just a big expensive game of Tug of War.

[Chef Jim]

2 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

You know what's depressing? The only Presidential candidates who've proposed a radical reworking of how the government funds itself in the last quarter century are fringe guys Steve Forbes and Herman Cain. Neither of them were even going to get elected (and for good reasons), but you'd think that some mainstream candidate would've picked up on at least some of the various ideas kicking around the think tanks and universities? I guess we are doomed to this cycle in which every Republican administration cuts the estate and capital gains taxes and the highest marginal rate, and every Democratic administration immediately undoes those cuts.

 

It’s not, nor it ever has been, a funding problem.  You, and almost everyone else, is looking at the wrong side of the balance sheet.  

[The Frankish Reich]

1 minute ago, Chef Jim said:

It’s not, nor it ever has been, a funding problem.  You, and almost everyone else, is looking at the wrong side of the balance sheet.  

Well, somehow the federal government's gonna raise money to pay for operations, even if those operations are the kinds of things you probably agree are necessary: the military, border protection, etc, etc. So you've got the usual ways that all countries use:

- customs duties (the oldest way in the USA)

- estate taxes

- capital gains taxes

- income taxes

- a VAT (never been tried in America)

My point isn't about the size of the federal government (I think it's too big by the way), it's about using imagination and economic analysis to determine what blend of these at what rates is optimal to fund the operations our Congress, in its, umm, wisdom, has decided to require.

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

6 minutes ago, Chef Jim said:

It’s not, nor it ever has been, a funding problem.  You, and almost everyone else, is looking at the wrong side of the balance sheet.  

What do you think could possibly be accomplished with a measly  3 trillion dollars ? Those ditches don’t dig and fill themselves in.

[Chef Jim]

11 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Well, somehow the federal government's gonna raise money to pay for operations, even if those operations are the kinds of things you probably agree are necessary: the military, border protection, etc, etc. So you've got the usual ways that all countries use:

- customs duties (the oldest way in the USA)

- estate taxes

- capital gains taxes

- income taxes

- a VAT (never been tried in America)

My point isn't about the size of the federal government (I think it's too big by the way), it's about using imagination and economic analysis to determine what blend of these at what rates is optimal to fund the operations our Congress, in its, umm, wisdom, has decided to require.

My point isn’t about the size of the government though that is a huge (no pun intended) problem. My point is have you ever seen an an accurate accounting of where all OUR money has gone?  I haven’t. 

[ComradeKayAdams]

12 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Well, somehow the federal government's gonna raise money to pay for operations, even if those operations are the kinds of things you probably agree are necessary: the military, border protection, etc, etc. So you've got the usual ways that all countries use:

- customs duties (the oldest way in the USA)

- estate taxes

- capital gains taxes

- income taxes

- a VAT (never been tried in America)

My point isn't about the size of the federal government (I think it's too big by the way), it's about using imagination and economic analysis to determine what blend of these at what rates is optimal to fund the operations our Congress, in its, umm, wisdom, has decided to require.

 

In terms of budgetary policy, the estate tax is actually not that important because the tax revenue generated is a small drop in the bucket relative to the other revenue streams. I believe it’s something like half of 1% of total annual tax revenue. So the estate tax is mostly a topic relevant to political philosophy. If you aspire to balance national budgets and choose to focus on fiscal policy at the exclusion of monetary policy, my three big recommended areas of focus would be the federal income tax, capital gains taxes, and the military budget. I know that you can easily pay for something like M4A with modest adjustments to the income tax brackets (go from 37% marginal to about 50% marginal at the highest), modest increases to short-term capital gains taxes (leaving the far more important long-term capital gains activity alone), and of course a sizable dismantling of U.S. imperialism (dropping the annual defense budget by ~25%...which would still leave ours twice as big as China’s, by the way). American Foreign Policy Fun Fact: did you all know that our tax dollars fund Israel’s universal health care program?? Meanwhile, the United States is still the only industrialized nation without universal health care, with about 500k families filing for bankruptcy every year due in significant part to medical bills… Neat.

 

Most Americans do believe in an estate tax, but to a point. The devil is in the details. Any productive discussion needs to be quantified. What’s the wealth floor for the estate tax? What percentage of it should be taxed? If we are setting up progressive estate tax brackets, what would they look like and why exactly are we setting them up like that? What bequeathment loopholes should be closed? What exceptions for family business transfers should be allowed? More importantly, what would you rather be doing on NFL Draft Day: engaging in wonky tax debates or reading up on all sorts of exciting college prospects whom you just know the Bills won’t ever draft?!?!

 

The minority of Americans who don’t believe in any estate tax mostly include the economic libertarian purist types and strict constructionist types. I personally have zero interest in debating with these types of people this weekend***, but of course the rest of you can spend your free time as you so choose. Recommended topics that might steer a debate with them in a more productive direction: the social contract, law of diminishing marginal utility of income, historical effect of wealth inequality on societal stability (especially: Gilded Age), tendencies of sociopaths and those who score low on empathy tests to cluster in high management positions, and the capitalist-laborer relationship as defined by Marx (i.e. the inherent “exploitation” of labor…that is to say, you can’t run a company that generates profit without some degree of economic exploitation of the laborer’s market value).

 

Godspeed, PPP’ers! Over and out, Commie Kay.

 

***-Come talk to me when you can get your childish ideas published in reputable economics journals, you Austrian School freaks. You know: ECONOMICS JOURNALS. They’re those things with collections of research papers that are periodically released and that attempt to describe how the macroeconomic real world actually works and not how we wish it would work because we’re all a bunch of selfish f*cking a-holes who just don’t want to pay any taxes and we dream of “going Galt” over to our anarcho-capitalist utopia of Somalia where we don’t have to be bothered anymore by all those lazy poor Americans…hmmm…was that a little too strong? Did I generalize too much? Well now you know how us lefties feel whenever we are subjected to your PPP rants…

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

7 minutes ago, ComradeKayAdams said:

 

In terms of budgetary policy, the estate tax is actually not that important because the tax revenue generated is a small drop in the bucket relative to the other revenue streams. I believe it’s something like half of 1% of total annual tax revenue. So the estate tax is mostly a topic relevant to political philosophy. If you aspire to balance national budgets and choose to focus on fiscal policy at the exclusion of monetary policy, my three big recommended areas of focus would be the federal income tax, capital gains taxes, and the military budget. I know that you can easily pay for something like M4A with modest adjustments to the income tax brackets (go from 37% marginal to about 50% marginal at the highest), modest increases to short-term capital gains taxes (leaving the far more important long-term capital gains activity alone), and of course a sizable dismantling of U.S. imperialism (dropping the annual defense budget by ~25%...which would still leave ours twice as big as China’s, by the way). American Foreign Policy Fun Fact: did you all know that our tax dollars fund Israel’s universal health care program?? Meanwhile, the United States is still the only industrialized nation without universal health care, with about 500k families filing for bankruptcy every year due in significant part to medical bills… Neat.

 

Most Americans do believe in an estate tax, but to a point. The devil is in the details. Any productive discussion needs to be quantified. What’s the wealth floor for the estate tax? What percentage of it should be taxed? If we are setting up progressive estate tax brackets, what would they look like and why exactly are we setting them up like that? What bequeathment loopholes should be closed? What exceptions for family business transfers should be allowed? More importantly, what would you rather be doing on NFL Draft Day: engaging in wonky tax debates or reading up on all sorts of exciting college prospects whom you just know the Bills won’t ever draft?!?!

 

The minority of Americans who don’t believe in any estate tax mostly include the economic libertarian purist types and strict constructionist types. I personally have zero interest in debating with these types of people this weekend***, but of course the rest of you can spend your free time as you so choose. Recommended topics that might steer a debate with them in a more productive direction: the social contract, law of diminishing marginal utility of income, historical effect of wealth inequality on societal stability (especially: Gilded Age), tendencies of sociopaths and those who score low on empathy tests to cluster in high management positions, and the capitalist-laborer relationship as defined by Marx (i.e. the inherent “exploitation” of labor…that is to say, you can’t run a company that generates profit without some degree of economic exploitation of the laborer’s market value).

 

Godspeed, PPP’ers! Over and out, Commie Kay.

 

***-Come talk to me when you can get your childish ideas published in reputable economics journals, you Austrian School freaks. You know: ECONOMICS JOURNALS. They’re those things with collections of research papers that are periodically released and that attempt to describe how the macroeconomic real world actually works and not how we wish it would work because we’re all a bunch of selfish f*cking a-holes who just don’t want to pay any taxes and we dream of “going Galt” over to our anarcho-capitalist utopia of Somalia where we don’t have to be bothered anymore by all those lazy poor Americans…hmmm…was that a little too strong? Did I generalize too much? Well now you know how us lefties feel whenever we are subjected to your PPP rants…

 

[SoCal Deek]

33 minutes ago, ComradeKayAdams said:

 

In terms of budgetary policy, the estate tax is actually not that important because the tax revenue generated is a small drop in the bucket relative to the other revenue streams. I believe it’s something like half of 1% of total annual tax revenue. So the estate tax is mostly a topic relevant to political philosophy. If you aspire to balance national budgets and choose to focus on fiscal policy at the exclusion of monetary policy, my three big recommended areas of focus would be the federal income tax, capital gains taxes, and the military budget. I know that you can easily pay for something like M4A with modest adjustments to the income tax brackets (go from 37% marginal to about 50% marginal at the highest), modest increases to short-term capital gains taxes (leaving the far more important long-term capital gains activity alone), and of course a sizable dismantling of U.S. imperialism (dropping the annual defense budget by ~25%...which would still leave ours twice as big as China’s, by the way). American Foreign Policy Fun Fact: did you all know that our tax dollars fund Israel’s universal health care program?? Meanwhile, the United States is still the only industrialized nation without universal health care, with about 500k families filing for bankruptcy every year due in significant part to medical bills… Neat.

 

Most Americans do believe in an estate tax, but to a point. The devil is in the details. Any productive discussion needs to be quantified. What’s the wealth floor for the estate tax? What percentage of it should be taxed? If we are setting up progressive estate tax brackets, what would they look like and why exactly are we setting them up like that? What bequeathment loopholes should be closed? What exceptions for family business transfers should be allowed? More importantly, what would you rather be doing on NFL Draft Day: engaging in wonky tax debates or reading up on all sorts of exciting college prospects whom you just know the Bills won’t ever draft?!?!

 

The minority of Americans who don’t believe in any estate tax mostly include the economic libertarian purist types and strict constructionist types. I personally have zero interest in debating with these types of people this weekend***, but of course the rest of you can spend your free time as you so choose. Recommended topics that might steer a debate with them in a more productive direction: the social contract, law of diminishing marginal utility of income, historical effect of wealth inequality on societal stability (especially: Gilded Age), tendencies of sociopaths and those who score low on empathy tests to cluster in high management positions, and the capitalist-laborer relationship as defined by Marx (i.e. the inherent “exploitation” of labor…that is to say, you can’t run a company that generates profit without some degree of economic exploitation of the laborer’s market value).

 

Godspeed, PPP’ers! Over and out, Commie Kay.

 

***-Come talk to me when you can get your childish ideas published in reputable economics journals, you Austrian School freaks. You know: ECONOMICS JOURNALS. They’re those things with collections of research papers that are periodically released and that attempt to describe how the macroeconomic real world actually works and not how we wish it would work because we’re all a bunch of selfish f*cking a-holes who just don’t want to pay any taxes and we dream of “going Galt” over to our anarcho-capitalist utopia of Somalia where we don’t have to be bothered anymore by all those lazy poor Americans…hmmm…was that a little too strong? Did I generalize too much? Well now you know how us lefties feel whenever we are subjected to your PPP rants…

Kay? Where you been? I missed your really really long posts. (Actually not)