If you were a politician...

[SPC]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

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I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

In any event, assessing inheritance as something the recipient "deserves" is a straw man, since nobody seriously advocates that position. Inheritance is the right of the giver, as having earned his fortune through valuable work and saving he is free to do with it as he pleases. Knowing that his earnings can help provide for his descendants provides greater incentive to save it rather than knowing that his earnings will be wasted by government bureaucrats as soon as he isn't around to stop them.

[SPC]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

In any event, assessing inheritance as something the recipient "deserves" is a straw man, since nobody seriously advocates that position. Inheritance is the right of the giver, as having earned his fortune through valuable work and saving he is free to do with it as he pleases. Knowing that his earnings can help provide for his descendants provides greater incentive to save it rather than knowing that his earnings will be wasted by government bureaucrats as soon as he isn't around to stop them.

Unfortunately, the only people who do valuable work in society are, by-and-large, the ones with nothing to pass on to their children. Thus inheritance becomes a means of perpetuating parasitism, and nothing more.

The value of someone's "work" is determined subjectively by how much other people are willing to pay for it, not by how much physical effort when into said work. While you may denigrate those that use their land, mental labor, and capital to benefit their fellow man rather than their physical labor¹, I guarantee that your life would be significantly worse off without their services. What I find truly ironic is that, if one were to actually implement a 100% inheritance tax after a certain amount, that would only encourage people to enter early retirement (since there is no point in working any more if that extra dollar is just going to go to a complete stranger anyway), rather than working for income that someone with a strong emotional connection to that individual (not to mention a substantial fraction of their DNA) could benefit from.

On the other hand, if someone truly has nothing to pass down to their children after a lifetime of work, that implies that said individual either spent all of their earnings during their lifetime, in which case they deliberately deprived their children of inheritance, or (far less likely) despite a lifetime of vocation never earned above sustenance, in which case it is dubious as to whether their work could be considered "valuable."

¹Lest my ambiguous phrasing be misinterpreted, benefiting their fellow man is the effect of their work, not the motivation, which is purely self-interest.

[SPC]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

I'm saying I find it unfair that some have to work hard for little while some don't have to work at all. Do you find that fair?

"Fairness" alone does not merit a policy proposal. Any system that prevents one from bequeathing his earnings to the people of his choice is unjust.

[SPC]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

I'm saying I find it unfair that some have to work hard for little while some don't have to work at all. Do you find that fair?

"Fairness" alone does not merit a policy proposal. Any system that prevents one from bequeathing his earnings to the people of his choice is unjust.

What's 'unjust' is that one person can end his or her life the proud owner of a dozen mansions while another ends it under a highway overpass.

I find it intriguing that most leftists seem to find both individuals living under a highway overpass to be a preferable alternative. What is missing here is the context regarding what would be the alternative arrangement, as despite the best efforts of egalitarians, social statistics such as income will naturally assort itself into a Pareto distribution. The only difference between those that believe in property rights and redistribution advocates is that the former prefer that the distribution be fluid and determined by productive economic output, whereas the latter prefer that the distribution be rigid and determined by political clout.

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Whomever paid that human being the salary over many years necessary to acquire that level of wealth would beg to differ.

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This point would only further solidify the idea that favoring inheritance taxes is motivated by envy more than anything else. In any case, the logical conclusion of your argument that "no human being is worth that much" would be not an inheritance tax, nor even a maximum income, but a maximum estate, whereby the government would confiscate any additional income a person acquires after achieving a fixed maximum wealth. If such a regime were in place, what incentive would there be for anyone who has achieved said wealth ceiling to continue providing useful goods and services to anyone besides his immediate family? One could point to the example of multibillionaires such as Gates or Buffett would give substantial portions of their estate to charitable efforts, but such a rebuttal would only illustrate my point. I doubt they would be as charitable if armed bureaucrats were in charge of redistributing their wealth instead of charities they deem to be reputable charities

[SPC]

I would seek a 100% tax on all inheritance, because the concept is ridiculous.

Basically. Maybe only tax everything above $1 million or so, but at a certain point, all of it should start going to the government.

No it shouldn't. the government doesn't deserve a cent of what is meant for my children. Anyway that is unfeasible, it would never pass.

Do your children deserve that money?

Does a complete stranger?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't see how the latter part of the question is relevant unless you seek to use envy as a basis for crafting policy.

I'm saying I find it unfair that some have to work hard for little while some don't have to work at all. Do you find that fair?

"Fairness" alone does not merit a policy proposal. Any system that prevents one from bequeathing his earnings to the people of his choice is unjust.

What's 'unjust' is that one person can end his or her life the proud owner of a dozen mansions while another ends it under a highway overpass.

I find it intriguing that most leftists seem to find both individuals living under a highway overpass to be a preferable alternative.

That's a completely specious assertion and I hope you either know it or are stupid because all other alternatives are so unpleasant to contemplate.

If they do not hold such a view, then the entire premise of their argument is flawed. If wealth inequality is assumed to be such an evil that a decrease in aggregate wealth is considered an acceptable consequence of bridging that inequality, then logically one must also oppose Pareto efficiency if it results in an uneven distribution of wealth.

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It could be argued that the output of an economy as a whole is by definition not very 'productive' if it doesn't have mechanisms in place to ensure that all or almost all of its members are at the very least not at risk of dying of exposure, starvation, or easily treatable diseases.[/quote]

I would challenge the premise. As the history of the world since the Industrial Revolution has shown, the best way to ensure that members of society are not at risk of those archaic illnesses is through a market economy. In any event, you are posing a non sequitur to distract from the issue at hand, namely that those that produce goods and services valued by the populace (including those used to treat famine and disease) are compensated monetarily in the market economy. While a world in which farmers, doctors, and scientists solved those problems out of an intrinsic desire to alleviate the human condition sounds superficially ideal, human nature dictates that providing them with great personal reward is a better incentive toward that end. even if the compensation is greater than what you deem to be "more than anyone deserves"

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A few generations of fools would be sufficient to undermine even the securest of edifices. To the extent that the currently wealthy can use their influence to safeguard their "earnings," it is through using political influence to erect barriers to competition against would-be market rivals.

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Surely you must concede that that is the desired outcome among those that possess the political clout to benefit from such a system. As for the rest, either they are useful idiots for the former group in not being able to foresee that an institution with the expressed purpose of taking wealth from productive members of society and dispensing on the people of their choosing will dispense that wealth upon those with political influence, or they covertly desire the expropriation of the wealth of productive members of society, regardless of the beneficiaries.

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Whomever paid that human being the salary over many years necessary to acquire that level of wealth would beg to differ. [/quote]

Do you sincerely believe that most people who are that wealthy become so by being paid salaries? Even if that were the case, does the worry ever strike you that the people who make these determinations--the employers, the owners, the people who struck various motherlodes in previous rounds of the half-random, half-rigged distribution game--might be on occasion mistaken about the worth of the people around them?[/quote]

Unless said individual is independently self-employed, then chances are they are making a salary from the company which they are employed with, even if it is most likely a management position. Certainly you don't believe that the wealthiest individuals run mom-and-pop businesses? If said company is compensating their management positions in excess of their contribution to the company, then certainly that is eating into their profits and investments, and thus will be punished in the market. Of course, you will reply that such lavish salaries for management are common practice in the business world, but I would aver that this is more a consequence of large regulatory barriers to competition rather than an intrinsic feature of a true capitalist system.

[SPC]

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This point would only further solidify the idea that favoring inheritance taxes is motivated by envy more than anything else.[/quote]

'Envy' is a disingenuous way to describe it. Concern for people who go through life without many resources, and relative lack (not complete lack) of concern for people who would be very well-heeled in all but the most radically redistributionist systems imaginable (in other words, who would remain rich under any policy politically possible to institute in any Western country) is more like it. Even if we accept that 'envy' is an even remotely fair characterization of this concern, it's far from immediately obvious that a very poor person is inherently unjustified in being envious of a very rich person.[/quote]

If envy were not a motivating factor behind redistributionism, then mentioning the hypothetical man with a dozen mansions as a juxtapositon to the man living under an overpass would be a non sequitur. Since you chose to mention the former in a rather condescending way, one would interpret that as a sign that the disparity in between them was somehow a motivation for robbing him of some of his possessions, rather than anything inherently undesirable about the latter's state. If one is solely motivated by "concern" for the lowest class, then why must only those above an arbitrary amount of wealth be responsible for their well-being? Surely if that is "society's" responsibility, then all members of society should be expected to "contribute".

Moreover, if concern for the lowest tier is the sole motivating factor for redistribution, then what state of the lowest tier would you find acceptable to concede a lack of need for redistribution? Even the poor vagrant which you described lived a much better life in a relatively capitalist country then many denizens of the Third World, which has been more willing to implement policies targeting the wealthy. I suspect that so long as there are individuals who make thousands of times more than the lowest common denominator that there will continue to be cries for redistribution, even if the lowest common denominator lived a lifestyle equivalent to the upper-middle class today. If that is the case, then there is no sense in denying that "coveting thy neighbor's goods" is a motivating factor for such a policy.

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To the extent that that's a fair question to ask about a capitalist class not composed primarily of sociopaths--which, okay, fine, that's somewhat unfair, I get that not everybody is ruled by their better angels all or even most of the time--it's part of the reason why estate and income taxes are better ideas than maximum estate, so the rhetorical question at the end of this quoted section partially answers the objection that you raise at the beginning of it.[/quote]

Do you not see that such half-measures provide the same incentive structure only with greater subtlety?
 

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So your argument is essentially that we can't redistribute wealth because rich people are petulant hostage-takers who will take their ball and go home if we try, thereby crashing the entire economy. I can certainly see how one would come to that conclusion, although I doubt it's the one you were trying to reach.
[/quote]



Reaching the rather obvious conclusion that imposing a maximum estate disincentivizes economic contribution once one's estate approaches said limit requires no assumptions of malicious intent on the part of the economic actors. Rather, my point was that even if an economic actor is ostensibly not acting out of self-interest but rather acting for charitable reasons, allowing said individual to give to the charity of his choosing provides greater incentive to continue to provide valuable economic output, as he is invested in the effort and can hold the donors accountable. On the other hand, he cannot hold the IRS accountable if they are much less efficient at providing his estate to the needy.