Posted on 06/09/2006 6:30:26 PM PDT by wjersey
So the estate tax cut went down in the Senate, to the cheers of class warriors everywhere. Congratulations to Democratic senators Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, and Mark Pryor -- all of whom voted against death-tax repeal after voting in favor of it a few years ago. At last, they’ve come to their senses!
Our rich people don’t need another tax break. No, they need higher taxes. And they should be vilified, too. That’s right: America should attack rich people. In fact, we must abolish wealth, which is a tremendous drag on our economy. It’s high time that we made the rich poor.
As for all the xenophobes who want to deport the illegal immigrants who toil in this economy, may I respectfully suggest that their generals (i.e., Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Tom Tancredo) consider expanding their dragnet? Let’s deport rich people, too!
These rich people are bad for America. We don’t need their ingenuity, their entrepreneurship, or their capital investment. In the name of egalitarian socialism, the only thing we need from them is more tax dollars. We now tax their incomes as salary, corporate profits, dividends, capital gains, and at death. But we must do better.
Perhaps we can tax them when they contribute to charities, or the building of a new church or synagogue, or a symphony orchestra, or a small-town cultural center; or when they create another college; or when they finance private scholarships for inner-city educations.
But we can’t stop there. Let’s criminalize the entire class of successful American entrepreneurs. Let’s haul out the distributional tables from the Joint Tax Committee and the Congressional Budget Office and target all upper-end earners for special wealth taxes.
Maybe we can even impose jail sentences on rich people. No more interest income at all, just like the radical fundamentalist Muslims do it!
Here’s a thought: Let’s publish the names of all rich people in the newspapers and on the blog sites. Even better, when fat cats venture out in public, let’s swarm them like those animal-rights advocates who throw paint on women wearing mink coats.
Simply, we must strive to make America more like France and Germany -- those great income-leveling, income-redistribution states. But it’s gonna take some work. When I last checked the international tax tables, I found that the U.S. has the third highest estate-tax rate out of 50 countries. We should be ashamed. Only third? We tax estates at a 46 percent marginal rate, but Japan is the best at 70 percent, followed by South Korea at 50 percent. We are pikers. How can we dare let Japan be ahead of us on taxing rich people?
The fact that 24 countries have a zero estate-tax rate, including China, should not concern us. They don’t know what they’re doing. And we do. We don’t want to be competitive in the world economy. We’d prefer to hang out a sign reading: “Capitalists are unwelcome in the U.S.”
This whole idea of keeping more of what you earn and own is just plain stupid. In fact, this whole capitalistic notion is just one of those bizarre global trends that undoubtedly will be reversed as people come to their senses.
The Czech Republic, Estonia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico -- they’re obviously all nuts with their zero tax rates on estates. Did I say Mexico? That’s perfect. Instead of creating thousands of new businesses and millions of new jobs in America, our rich can do this for Mexico. If we deport them, that is. What a great idea!
Forget Sen. Jon Kyl’s fallback position of a 15 percent death-tax rate, after exempting the first $5 million of an estate. That would move us too close to Canada, Australia, and Argentina, which also have zero rates. It would also promote the foolish idea that there is a link between reward and work, and reward and risk.
The whacko ultra-right-wing idea that it must pay after-tax to work and invest is simply insane. Forget what the brilliant Arthur Laffer says. The best way to generate more saving and investment is to tax both more.
This may all sound wrong, but our soak-the-rich liberals are deep thinkers. They have their fingers on the pulse of the hundred-million-strong investor class. They know that the worldwide spread of free-market economics, which was launched by Reagan and Thatcher twenty-five years ago, which has raised global prosperity to record heights, and which has caused the phenomenal growth of the middle class in places like India, China, and Russia, is absolutely nuts.
After all, capital is the enemy of labor! Forget the obvious facts that you can’t create a new job without a business and that you can’t fund a new business without capital. That’s obviously wrong.
Once again, capital is the enemy. Rich people are evil. We have to put an end to all this capitalist, supply-side nonsense.
By the way, when is Karl Marx’s birthday? I have to stop writing now, so I can go look it up. Next May? Well, at least that will give me time to prepare a triumphant celebration for the greatest soak-the-rich advocate of all time.
We aren't taxing rich people. The rich people are dead.
We are taxing their poor heirs, who just lost a loved one, and now watch as half their loved one's worldly posessions are taken by the government.
You gotta love necropheliac tax policy!
Got to pay for all those illegals somehow.
Hmmmm.....maybe the children should have to earn their own money.
If all fortunes were earned, wealthy people would be much more likely to be conservatives, since they would have to understand how the world really works in order to become successful. This would cut down on the Kennedys and Rockefellers.
"So the estate tax cut went down in the Senate, to the cheers of class warriors everywhere. Congratulations to Democratic senators Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ron Wyden, and Mark Pryor -- all of whom voted against death-tax repeal after voting in favor of it a few years ago. At last, they’ve come to their senses!"
America..remember these liars and crooks who vote to steal your family wealth via death taxation. GHOULS.
That might be the best brief summation of the estate tax that I've seen.
That would be a good thing for the parents of children to decide.
I don't want the GOVERNMENT deciding whether my children should have to earn their own money or not.
Perhaps this will be enough of an eye opener to really get the ball rolling on the FairTax...
I think that should be up to the rich parents, not the government, to decide.
I can hear Mary Landrieu now. If they are going to continue to vote after they're dead, they can pay taxes.
Yes, but don't forget George Voinovich of Ohio, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. They are the only two Republicans who joined the Democrats to defeat the repeal.
Once again, the RINOS kill the meaning of Republican "majority.
Voinovich needs a conservative primary opponent to send him back to Ohio to rot, and prepare to hand over his estate to the feds.
We should get this group to sign a pledge that when they die, they will pay their fair share. They will divest themsilves of any trust or other estate tax avoidance schemes they use to not pay.
If they believe in this tax, I want to make sure they pay it.
I want to see an independant group state that Ted Kennedy will pay hie 55% estate tax if he dies. I want to see him pay his tax for the Kennedy compound in the Hamptons.
I think we should start a movement. As my English skills are deficient as compared to others on this site, I will let come up with the written document. (Yea, I know I'm not doing the work> :))
I recall very clearly as a youngster hearing my own father stating a similar thought. Esentially that inherited wealth was very likely detremental to character, and that confiscatory death taxes were perhaps not so evil. It stuck with me as he, like my entire family, was otherwise so anti socialist/democrat party. I recognised however that he had after all found it his lot to bail out his depression ruined parents, not enjoy the luxury of inherited wealth, and perhaps he felt some resentment from that . YET, in the final analysis he took great care to protect his assets by every means possible from confiscation by the government, and I assure you it afforded him great happiness and satisfaction to be able to bequeath much of the fruit of his labor to his family. You know , after all , it was HIS wealth , do do with as HE saw fit.
How many believe in responsibility here in paying their tab and how many believe they should run away from the bill like the liberal hearted slugs they are?
The Kennedy's have trusts held in tax havens outside of the country and will pay about 1% estate tax in those foreign lands last I heard.
Anyone with a family farm or other business should set them up in special trusts before the owners die so it passes on with little or no tax.
Problem is that if some farmers and other business owners are stupid, then they will have no protection and will pay top dollar at the date of death.
Yeah. We surely don't need the billions of dollars of charitable donations the old money heirs spend all of their time disbursing. It is much better for the government to do it. Jeeeeze.
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