obie_wan Posted July 18, 2008 Posted July 18, 2008 Well without the death tax you would have more super rich families who control everything and own everything. Many of these kids who inherit this mass wealth have no clue how to use it responsibly. Could you imagine being 18 years old and being given a billion dollars tax free... In that way it is designed to keep wealth from overly accumulating in just certain families. I don't mind the death tax, what I do mind is the fact that are government can't get its own head out of its own ass and do the right thing with tax money and invest it into the country and make the country a much better place for everyone. something like families like the Kennedies who structured their assets, then designed a law that would exempt them but apply to new business creation?
KnightRider Posted July 18, 2008 Posted July 18, 2008 Lest folks make the false assumption that it is only the poor who want to soak the rich who favor what luntz et al have successfully dubbed the death tax note that the extremely wealthy such as Warren Buffett and 118 other fat cats have strongly come out in favor of inheritance taxes. Buffett went on record saying: "Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit," Buffett told the New York Times in 2001. "[Repeal would be like] choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics." Buffett also joined a campaign in 2001 to preserve the estate tax alongside 119 other wealthy Americans, including George Soros and Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates, Sr.. Details can be found at > http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/pf/taxes/b...e_tax/index.htm < Folks very rich, very poor and in between see value in the estate tax. The problems thrust upon the relatively few folks (even if it is thousands of farms we are talking within a base of 300 million people which would make 3 million farms at 1% relatively few) whose family farm wealth is a problem there would seem to be a targeted solution which gets at solving these few problems rather than allowing the Donald Trumps of the world hide behind these intrepid family farmers. The simple fact is that if you are going to spend 3 trillion on a war you choose in Iraq the money has to come from somewhere. The estate tax with it sizable exemptions and can be avoided if one chooses to donate the money to a reputable charitable cause (or even create a real irrevocable charity which runs the Bills for the benefit of the WNY community- one would need to fight the NFL which would prefer to stop future Green Bays but as Cleveland demonstrated the NFL can be beat) and really is a solvable problem despite the WSJ's politically motivated slant. That's Marxism, plain and simple, and the assertion that the estate tax remedies this "problem" of aristocracy is not true. How come the Washingtons and Hancocks didn't survive and repeat into the 20th century? How come we have multiple generations of Bushes and Kennedys elected to office? The Waltons are still some of the richest in the world. If Mr. Buffett is worried about an aristocracy, he should lead by example and hand over 60 of 62 billion dollars to the government.
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