Author Topic: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful  (Read 477 times)

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Oceander

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Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« on: April 01, 2014, 02:22:34 am »
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Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful

By: Joe Cunningham (Diary)  |  March 31st, 2014 at 04:53 AM

In the span of three days, I count two pieces on just how awful inheriting wealth is and that we should totally tax the heck out of those who inherit money from their parents. There are probably more, but I’m too exhausted from reading these two to go looking.

The first dates back to March 26 with a piece in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section. James Bulter calls for the end of inherited wealth.

Quote
    Why do we permit this? The transfer of wealth between generations is an injustice: it is a reward for no work, and a form of access to privileges that are otherwise beyond reach. Professor Thomas Piketty, in his new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, makes the argument that, after a social-democratic blip in the middle of the last century, inheritance is once again becoming the key route to wealth. Piketty argues that if wealth is concentrated and the return on capital is higher than the economy’s growth rate, inherited wealth will grow more rapidly than that stemming from work. This returns us to the terrain of Balzac and Austen, where the road to financial security is to target those who already possess wealth and, where possible, marry them. The data Piketty analyses – a huge and comprehensive set – suggests that the proportion of people receiving a sum in inheritance larger than the lifetime earnings of the bottom 50% is set to return to 19th-century levels in the next couple of decades. Pleasant news for our neo-Victorian government; less pleasant for the rest of us, and a disaster for anyone who cares about inequality.

On March 28, the Washington Post ran this piece, calling for higher taxes among those who inherit their money.

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    We need a tax policy that accounts for how economic benefits and disparities are passed down from generation to generation. To do that, we could calculate tax rates based not just on what people earn now — as traditional progressive taxation does — but also on the income their families brought in during their critical childhood years. We shouldn’t tax the first-generation college graduate who makes a half-million dollars at the same 39.6 percent marginal tax rate as we do the heir who had his job handed to him.

God forbid people accumulate wealth for their family to survive in this screwed-up world. No, we need not only punish the people who earn money through their hard work, but also their children and grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. After all, we’ve got to make them pair their fair share. This idea isn’t new, by any stretch, but, much like Jesus, where two or more are gathered in its name, class warfare is among them.

The demonization (hilarious note – the Chrome spell check wants me to replace “demonization” with “demonetization”) of wealth is, of course, a central tenant in the Religion of the Left. If you have money, you’re a terrible human being. If you have money through inheritance, that’s worse.

By the way, do you know who else was punished for the “sins” of his father? Bane. And he went on to break Batman’s back and seize control of Gotham.

Makes you think…

Offline speekinout

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Re: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2014, 02:54:23 am »
This is one of my real hot buttons. I've known several families that had to sell the family farm to developers of tick-tacky housing developments because there wasn't enough cash to keep the farm after the parents died. I hated that.
But what I hated even more is when Jack Kent Cooke died, and his son John couldn't afford to keep the Redskins football team. I've never liked danny snider and what he did to the team. I think there were other teams that had to be sold for the same reason - only the Steelers escaped the inheritance tax because Rooney died on one of the last few days the inheritance tax had a hiatus.

And if we're going to penalize families for having an inheritance, then we should also tax all of the charities that people name in their wills.

Harrumph - I did say it was one of my hot buttons.  :thud:

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2014, 03:39:17 am »
Your stuff isn't your; it belongs to the government, who grant you certain rights to it, during your lifetime.

Communism.
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Oceander

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Re: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2014, 03:39:49 am »
Your stuff isn't your; it belongs to the government, who grant you certain rights to it, during your lifetime.

Communism.

Liberalism/progressivism

Offline EC

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Re: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2014, 05:15:33 am »
Your stuff isn't your; it belongs to the government, who grant you certain rights to it, during your lifetime.

Communism.

He who has the power to destroy something, controls it. Paul Atredies.
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Online Bigun

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Re: Inheriting Money is Awful and You Should Feel Awful
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2014, 07:44:01 am »
Your stuff isn't your; it belongs to the government, who grant you certain rights to it, during your lifetime.

Communism.

And the income tax!

"What the income tax does is lead the people of this country down a path to where actual control of their resources, which in the end is the control over their will, is handed off to the government.
The government then manipulates that will in order to destroy the freedom of our electoral system through the income tax structure, and we call the resulting slavery a free system.
In point of fact, it is not as the founders understood, and the only way to restore real freedom is to give people back control over the income that they earn so that they won‘t, at the voting booth and in other phony issues, be subject to that manipulation."


   ALAN KEYES IS MAKING SENSE Television Show Monday, Jan. 28, 2002

He could not have been any more right!

« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 07:49:34 am by Bigun »
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien