Questions for conservatives

[anvi]

ag,

This is an extraordinarily minor point regarding your earlier comments about right to work.  In terms of the substance of the point, I agree with you entirely.  But I'm guessing bgwah was perhaps sensing that the analogy between joining a workplace union and the boss requiring new hires to join one party or only be from one religion doesn't quite fly.  A work union supposedly represents the interests of all the workers as workers, whereas the hypothetical boss who requires his workers to register with one party or be from one religion is imposing terms on them that have nothing to do with their work and appeal to his interests and not theirs.  In order for analogies to function optimally as arguments, the two things the analogy is comparing have to be strongly similar in as many respects as possible, but these two cases strike me as fundamentally dissimilar, which is why the specific analogies didn't sound convincing.

Like I said, in terms of the substance of your point, since every individual in the country has the right to free association and since unions often don't actually represent the interests of all the workers, especially junior workers, I couldn't agree with you more on the issue itself. 

[Gustaf]

Actually, in the US gifts are taxable, I believe.

The simplest arrangement, of course, would be to treat gift and inheritance as income in the year you obtain it. Not that hard to monitor: your great-aunt has died and left you USD$50,000 in a year in which you earned USD$20,000, so your gross income should be USD$70,000 and that's it. Then, of course, you could have different rates not only for wage and investment, but also for inheritance income. But the default should be that it is your income, period.

Yes, that was my point.

Ok, so that's what you meant. When you said income derived from the estate I thought you meant income streams or something. I guess that sounds fairly reasonable. Of course, when you're forcing people to give up family houses or heirlooms because they can't afford to pay 30% or 50% of its value in taxes (or whatever the income tax rate is in one's country) people will be mightily pissed. Then again, if you have very low rates they won't. But if the rates get really low you can start wondering what the point of them is overall...

[Jerseyrules]

Are anarco-capitalists allowed to comment here too