Posted on 08/24/2023 9:15:05 AM PDT by JayGalt
Social media has buzzed with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s apparent support of a massive inheritance tax.
In Ramaswamy’s Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence, he proposes the idea of a 59% minimum inheritance tax. Ramaswamy draws the number from suggestions proposed by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Piketty, an avowed socialist, authored Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016-2021.
“Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology,” the book’s Amazon description reads.
Saez co-authored The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, which advocates a “form of capitalist reformism similar to that of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,” according to World Socialist Web Site.
“If anything, I’d take the figure Piketty and Saez arrive at as a minimum. We shouldn’t allow people to become billionaires just by having rich parents,” Ramaswamy wrote. In other words, it appears Ramaswamy supports stealing wealth you’ve earned from the fruits of your labor that you wish to pass down to your children.
“Vivek Ramaswamy wants to impose a massive death tax on every American, cites avowed socialist Thomas Piketty to make the case for government stealing the fruits of your life’s work. You don’t want this guy anywhere near your Cabinet,” journalist Jordan Schachtel writes. “It would destroy the main driver for human innovation. Fewer policies more destructive than a death tax,” Schachtel writes.
(Excerpt) Read more at wltreport.com ...
Third, to confront multigenerational wealth, Ramaswamy embraces inheritance taxes as a way to “save meritocracy from degenerating into aristocracy.” Ramaswamy flirts with a suggestion by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez to set the optimal inheritance tax rate in the United States at 59%. Lest you hope, as I did, that he might eventually walk that number back, he doubles down: “If anything, I’d take the figure Piketty and Saez arrive at as a minimum. We shouldn’t allow people to become billionaires just by having rich parents.”
To which I ask, why not? His answer: A very high inheritance tax is “a way of redistributing duty.” Those who become rich “owe it to everyone else to preserve meritocracy so others have the chance to do the same.” Two points here. First, their success should be proof that the system is, in fact, working. If they can make money through merit, others can, too. Second, people have moral duties apart from those that should be enforced by the state. Americans shouldn’t eat, smoke, and drink as much as they do. But few Americans want the government to restrict our consumption of these things. Similarly, the question isn’t whether those who make money should give generously to others but whether justice requires the state to appropriate people’s holdings involuntarily for the sake of meritocracy. Someone can have the moral duty to give without the state having the legal obligation to make him do it.
In this video, Ramaswamy says he has “inherently-Libertarian instincts…I’m skeptical of the government…I think the government mostly lies.”
Good bye family business, good bye family farm. Hello the state is entitled to all of the wealth you have amassed in your lifetime not your heirs. The hits keep right on coming with Ramaswamy. Truly the trojan horse of the 2024 campaign season.
“Hypercapitalism” or “Runaway Capitalism” or “Unbridled Captialism” - where is this happening so I can move there?
An inheritance tax is immoral.
Everyone of the candidates at that debate last night are Rino’s and deepstaters. None of them would come close to saving this country. That is why I didn’t watch. They have already said enough to know who they are. Along with other things we know about many of them.
Then abolish the Senate first. It is the modern day Aristocracy in a nutshell.
Oh, crap. I had a contracts professor in law school who wanted to abolish inheritance in 1987, and was trying to sell us on the idea. His argument was that once you are dead, you have no interest in your estate, so the government should get it.
That is the end of civilization. If there is no generational accrual of wealth, and no stake in the long-term future, the whole edifice collapses.
Having idle wealth is immoral too. There has to be a balance.
Its time to get off the Vivek Rammswanny train folks. And he’s not going to be VP either.
Snake oil Manchurian. Win a couple elections Vivek. Then come around.
...well, I’d make him Sec of Commerce to push entrepeneurial projects... ymmv
What is idle wealth? Never heard of such a thing.
Says who? Who defines "idle"? You? Vivek Ramaswamy? Joe Biden? Karl Marx?
There has to be a balance.
Again, says who? Who defines "balance"?
Entrusting that kind of decision-making to government is sheer folly.
For those that would like to see the book review:
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/from-grievance-to-greatness/
The section on inheritance tax is the third area they discuss. The Law & Liberty review illustrates that Ramaswamy has a unique world view much of which is piquant but like most intellectuals he is short on understanding real life consequences.
VR with his massive taxes, the abandonment of Israel, Taiwan and Hawaii, he belongs in the Democrat Party.
We’ve got a lot of trust fund babies who have to appreciation as to how that money was earned.
That money winds up in the coffers of groups like Black Lives Matter.
And say, 50% of all money over 100 million to a billion.
That shouldn't hurt family farms or businesses.
And also, taking money from people by force of government laws from people who have different views from you is definitely immoral.
No. Man the NeoCons are out in force today. They have their knives out for VR. VR’s no more forever wars/anti MIC stance has them all tore up.
I don't agree. Instead, repeal the 17th Amendment.
The Senate, composed of men beholden to the several State legislatures, was originally intended to be the States' check and balance against the federal government's inevitable attempts at overreach. This idea was later incorporated into the Constitution by the Tenth Amendment.
We've established what you are.
Now we're just haggling over the price ...
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