Posted on 04/16/2015 8:44:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s undoubtedly too soon to begin getting your hopes up yet, but there are signs that the new GOP controlled Congress may finally be getting down to some of the regular business we were promised during the election. Plenty of fire and brimstone has been flying around both chambers over matters of foreign policy and big ticket items, but some mundane issues of importance to conservatives are still waiting on the back burner. Today, one of these should be moving forward. We’re going to have yet another vote on repealing the death tax and it’s got both teams pretty fired up.
The House is gearing up to vote Thursday on repealing the estate tax, an issue that has energized the base in both parties — and that Democrats and Republicans see as a political winner.
Republicans are making the vote the centerpiece of their agenda during a week when millions of taxpayers face the annual IRS filing deadline and anti-tax groups regularly hold protests. For the GOP, repealing the estate tax — or the “death tax,” as they’ve long called it — is more than just a proposal favored by their supporters in the business community.
Republican leaders insist it’s patently unfair that people pay taxes as they accumulate wealth through the years, only for their heirs to pay additional taxes on that wealth after they die.
It’s already being pointed out that there aren’t enough solid votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on this issue, to say nothing of override a veto, but that’s hardly a reason to run away with your tail between your legs. The death tax is not just offensive to some of the fundamental principles of the country, but it’s simply bad policy. When an individual works their entire life and somehow manages to accumulate wealth which has already been taxed each and every step of the way, turning around and taxing the entire nest egg yet again when they finally shuffle off this mortal coil is not only offensive, but constitutes double taxation which should be outlawed. More than that, the story of success in America is not just the tale of any one person’s achievements, but the opportunity to pave the way for your family and offer them a better start in life than you yourself had.
That is doctrinal anathema to the Left however. Some liberal opponents are hiding behind the fig leaf of saying this change will result in lost revenue which will not be made up elsewhere. There may be some truth to that which merits debate, but when was the last time you heard a liberal express any honest distaste for a deficit? Their real reasons are far more cultural than mathematical, and the Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore pulls away the mask briefly and admits what most of us already knew. The Left loves the death tax not because it’s good policy, but because they want to stick it to both capitalism and perceived capitalists. (Emphasis added.)
[P]rogressives should be quite aggressive in welcoming this debate. They have plenty of ammunition, including the passionate arguments of the father of the federal estate tax, Theodore Roosevelt. And they really do need to counter the mythology of the small struggling business or farm being taken away by a socialistic Uncle Sam. This is all a cover for the real beneficiaries, the wealthiest people in America, who hardly need the kind of protection against taxes in death they’ve managed to secure in life. Large inheritances are and have always been an enormous factor in long-term inequality, and an offense to the presumed morality of capitalism, in which material rewards follow market utility or economic “virtue,” not birth lotteries.
Beyond that, it’s fun, if not especially charitable, to mock the tears of the undeserving heir at the indignity of having to share his or her windfall with the commonwealth.
There it is in a nutshell. How much revenue the government collects, the state of the federal deficit or the morality of double taxation aren’t of any concern to Ed Kilgore and his ilk. In the end, the true evil in America is the specter of wealth and success. Purporting to speak for “the commonwealth” in their unwashed masses, liberal spokesmodels are mostly upset at anyone who buys into the “perceived morality of capitalism.” This underpins virtually every argument we have on economics and tax policy. Liberals have their own vision for America and it is one where success is something to be ashamed of and which should be punished wherever it is found. If everyone can’t have everything, then we should all share in the pain regardless of personal merit. The Left embraces socialism wholeheartedly, but most of the time they are at least embarrassed enough about it to lie and come up with some other argument as cover. Kilgore is, in a way, providing a refreshing bit of honesty here.
That doesn’t mean that the effort to repeal the death tax will come without cost. As Noah explained last night, good policy is not always good politics and it would be foolish to completely ignore that warning. It is true that populism is a powerful totem, and during tough economic times it’s easy to wave a red flag in front of the masses and urge them to take up their pitchforks and torches against those they perceive as “the rich.” But everyone with any interest in honest work and the ambition to make a better life for themselves and their family eventually realizes that their own success will become the target if they embrace such policies.
The liberals always lock up the money in trusts that the IRS can’t touch.
The elimination of inherited wealth is one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto.
2, and only 2 reasons:
1. They have an insatiable appetite for money so they can buy a constituency;
2. Dead people don’t vote.
All You Estate Belong Us.
I knew that years ago when I was in College.
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Inheriting the fruits of labor from your parents and building on them is the natural way to rise to the next higher income bracket and social class. That is what the socialists hate, preferring instead for the masses to continue DOWNWARD economically so as to be dependent on the government for subsidence.
The past is the today’s rich, the future is today’s middle-class.
If they had their way liberals would be taxing the air you breathe or how many steps you take. They want to tax everything. It’s just not fair that some people have more than others. Unless it’s liberals who have more than others. Then that’s quite alright.
It almost isn't worth the argument, there's no common ground. The idea that a government exists to redistribute wealth and insure "fairness" is now frighteningly pervasive and people actually vote on that basis, with themselves as the righteous recipients of wealth they have not earned, secure in the lie that those that have it, stole it, and so it's perfectly fine to steal it "back".
Simple, find out what God says about it, and the left will choose the opposite and force it on society through the government...
Prov 13:22
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, And the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
The Right should retort: “Fellow Congressmen, you are all quite well-off. Each of you who support the estate tax should look your children in the eye, and say ‘I am voting to deny you half of what you _would_ receive as inheritance, which means that some 75% of what I earned and which survives me goes to the government instead of you - and I feel no anger or shame about ensuring it stays that way.’”
LEARN THE FACTS: HTTP://WWW.FAIRTAX.ORG
When will America FINALLY rid itself of a slave tax system better suited to a third world banana republic dictatorship and is as much about having a mechanism by which the political class can reward its friends and punish its enemies than it is about raising the revenue for the Constitutional and necessary functions of government!
Then there’s THIS. I have a number of issues with ol’ Honest Abe, but he got THIS ONE SPOT ON:
“The tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being
collected in large parcels at a few commercial points, will
require comparatively few officers in their collection; while by
the direct (income) tax system, the land must be literally
covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of
Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green
things.”
President Abraham Lincoln. The quote comes from “Campaign Circular from Whig Committee” written on March 4, 1843. It was co-authored by Lincoln It can be found in volume 1 of the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,page 309.
They love ALL taxes. It’s just that they love this one MORE because some rich person DIED.................
Sure they do, sometimes more than once on the same day.
Long-term inequality- We had better have Republicans jumping hard on this "inequality" reasoning. Reality is that inequality is something that can never be achieved. But the commies who tow that line will become wealthy and powerful striving to have government working toward that end. They MIGHT have a point if they applied that standard to the super rich, but the super rich have ways of getting around it. As they apply estate taxes, they are merely stealing assets from families who have worked their tails off over one or two generations. That, my friends, is immoral and evil. Despite the Commie viewpoint, accumulation of assets, to a point (short of permitting monopolistic activities/ alliances and excessive influence over government), is a very, very good thing. ALL benefit from their ability to invest and be charitable.
In short, estate taxes help protect leftists from those who are a threat to the power they have deceitfully accrued over the years by burrowing into our government structure: the grotesquely immoral societal parasites are protecting themselves from the honest, moral, hard-working citizens who have actually earned the proper standing to influence government and have assets.
Socialism is the “gospel” of cynicism. Socialism rejects the very IDEA of accomplishment or excellence in anything other than criticism.
It thus obliterates society’s memory and gratitude for achievement. It must, therefore,be expected to impoverish society. It is a destroyer of security for the old, and of long range hope for the young.
Leave it to the Republicans to give the Left more fodder for their class warfare BEFORE an important national election.
This will be vetoed if passed. Does anyone think the Obama Left candidates will lose a significant number of votes for a veto? No, but they will gain a bunch from the under-informed and distributionist poor.
If the Republicans elect a President and retain the majority in both houses this tax could be reduced or eliminated with not much consequence in elections.
Once democrats get a sky high Death Tax rate back in place and get the Obamacare Death Panels up
and running they will have another money-making scheme to finance their wealth redistribution schemes:
- The Obamacare death panel refuses expensive medical care to senior citizens.
- The Senior citizen dies earlier than necessary.
- The Federal Government confiscates the hog’s share of the deceased’s estate as taxes.
Of course the death panels will not apply to high level democrat politicians, bureaucrats
and their elitist financial donors.
And there will be plenty of loopholes built into the Death Tax policy for them to weasel
out of paying the same rates as the little people.
It is not, as doubtless your handle would imply, in any sense rooted in compassion. (See Compassion Or Compulsion?) It is, indeed, Conservatism that is compassionate, reflecting a true appreciation of the grounded struggle that went into the achievement of all we hold dear.
William Flax
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