Posted on 07/24/2017 8:42:16 AM PDT by NRx
...The idea that we should be able to pass on our life’s accumulated wealth to descendants is deeply embedded. It appeals to the fundamental biological urge to protect your offspring and propagate your genes. Though only a small minority of estates are subject to inheritance tax in Britain as it currently stands, opinion polls consistently find that the majority of people oppose it. Instinct seems to override common sense. VAT falls disproportionately on people with low incomes, but it’s far less hated.
Understandable sensitivity around issues relating to death make it difficult to discuss, but it’s time this conventional wisdom was held up to proper scrutiny. Yes, the desire to pass on property to your descendants may be natural – but why should we be slaves to our biology? Social progress has frequently depended on our ability to transcend individualistic urges and work together for the common good.
In contemporary times, most people agree that tax should facilitate transfer of wealth from those who “have” to those who “need”. Public spending is messy and complicated, but the overall redistributive flow is from the relatively rich to the comparatively poorer. Justifications for not totally eradicating income equality have both moral and practical arguments: it’s argued that people morally deserve to be rewarded for being good at their job, and also that society needs to offer financial rewards to encourage people to work hard and be productive.
Neither of these arguments really apply in the case of inheritance. Morally speaking, people who stand to inherit large sums haven’t done anything to earn that money. An accident of birth placed them in comparatively wealthy families and they’ve benefited from that their whole life. Some people who stand to inherit have struggled, true, but so have many people who won’t inherit anything at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
What’s ours is ours.
Your stuff is negotiable...
All you mom’s stuff belong us.
I would take a match to it first.
This was being pitched to me in first year law school by my contracts prof, back in 1987!
Most people are morons, or evil. No other way around it. Most of today's poor in any developed country aren't really poor by any true standard. The poor have access to things today that many people who grew up in the 1950s didn't have, rich or poor.
Poor is a state of mind.
Speaking of have vs. need. Charlie Gard needed care months ago. Those who have the power prevented this need.
Do we really want to go there with a 100% inheritance tax? Sorry Mr. Jones, but the government is a bit short this month, and you're worth more to us dead, than alive.
Why not just be able to abort your parents? Then there’d be no waiting around for the big payoff.
I think it is a good idea. I plan to give them everything including my firearms, bullets first from my heirs.
This is why the Left wins - they never stop trying to pass this garbage and stuff it in the heads of their vic, er, students.
Because it doesn't belong to you !
Taxes have already been paid on this income, for the privilege of your gratuitous spending.
What are you going to do when you run out of other people's money ?
.. and you have to face the debit that you have run up ?
Welcome to Venezuela !
How about putting the leeches on Snap to work and tying their tubes?
CLARIFICATION: I mean stop them from having more illegitimate children. Actually, just dump the system. OOps.
This was tried in the USSR immediately after the revolution. The results proved so unmanageable that even the Commies ordered inheritance rights reinstated.
Democrats want to steal from traditional hard working Americans... it’s who they are... see tag:
Let’s use Chelsea Clinton as a test case and see how it works out.
The left has always been about government sanctioned theft.
Bill Whittle did a video a few years ago showing that the arithmetic didn’t work out; confiscating all wealth of the Forbes 400 richest people didn’t cover the federal deficit for even one year.
And the second-year haul from the new Fortune 400 richest people wouldn’t be nearly as big.
Feel the Bern !
We need a special tax on journalists to help fix the damage they have done.
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