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.
That's why a lot of families in such situations use family limited partnerships to avoid estate taxes.
You're perfectly free to go out and create all the wealth you want to. No one is stopping you.
Kudlow is NOT an open borders supporter.
He is in favor of sensible solutions.
Advocating deprting illegals instead of finding a solution may make people feel better, but it is not realistic.
And when the economy needs and can accomodate extra workers, not providing them only hurts OUR economy. Providing them within the law takes away from the incentive to come here illegally, and we would know who is in the country.
All those who are against "amnesty" should ask themselves -- what REALISTIC solution do they have regarding the illegals already here?
Pay the bill by eliminating the "earned income tax credit" which is nothing but welfare!
BTW, I don't believe in charity!
Everyone earn your own keep.
Kudlow thinks Joe will just fall in line? Be there when it's Kudlow's ox being gored?
What the fiscal conservatives had better understand if they want anything done is that Joe is not just unhappy, he's disgusted and furious and fit to be tied. It's going to affect your pet issue, and attempting to wave his concerns away (or condescend to him, like the Fred Barnes of the RINOs do) is going to get you a third party and President Hillary. And Joe's not stupid--he knows what "amnesty" means, no matter how Clintonesque the argument.
This is every issue dear to the hearts of erstwhile elitists and hegemonists...and especially the WOT, though the idiots in the admin haven't figured that out yet. America has just seen GWB wave a white flag at Mexico, and they're not going to forget it. Heretofore, they didn't associate a shrug and a surrender with GWB. Now they do.
Words, words, words, no constructive suggestion.
What do YOU think we should do:
1.) with the 12 million illegals currently living in the US
2.) with the needs of business for workers for jobs that Americans can't and won't do?
And suggest to the estate-tax elimination enthusiasts that they ought to just not pay that terrible tax. What a novel idea. Yeah, just don't obey the law. Keep the money.
Just be a willing keeper of willing money.
In other words you do NOT have a constructive solution.
And I just let myself be conned into the thread hijack into an immigration thread, so I won't continue that debate on this thread.
Kudlow is right about the Estate Tax. Do you think people should be taxed twice?
Who's being taxed twice? I see two entitities being taxed, an individual once, and his heirs once. Kudlow once, and his heirs once.
Conned? snort. You con easily. You posted to me first, and I was replying to someone who had already brought up the subject.
Political alliances and loyalties will end up mattering more to Kudlow once he loses his most important ally. They might even end up being relevant to your pocketbook.
It took my husband & I 20 years to pay off his inheritence taxes @ $10k per year. His mother worked HARD and we work hard to pay our bills.
Money I earn, and pay taxes on, I cannot even give away to my own without becoming liable for additional taxes.
I agree with you, because everyone should pay something.
I can shorten it: Governmental capital confisction.
It isn't my debt or my familes debt.
I haven't received even remotely back what I continue to pay in. And it isn't possible to ever do so in my life time.
Just because politicians continue to misspend the money they collect from me now isn't my fault. If they'd stop continuely increasing the spending of our money they could begin to pay off the national debt now without confiscating my money when I die they already taxed when I was alive.
If you are not an American citizen, that could be true.
There is a debt and grandkids are not the ones who made it, we all did.
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