Who Wins with the Estate Tax Repeal? Ya know, it's a funny world. 1 person out of 1,000 will benefit from this law, but the Congress just has to shove it to the top of their To-Do List. Stop and think about that for a minute. 1 person out of 1,000.

In the meantime:
hundreds out of 1,000 have no health care.
fifty or a hundred seniors struggle to pay for prescription drugs.
ten or twenty families bankrupt themselves caring for an ailing family member.
ten or twenty families use their life savings paying for nursing home care.

There are two primary reasons the estate tax is a good idea. Let's get the smokescreens out of the way first.

The Republicans claim the "death tax" is a second tax on the same money. That's just baloney. The tax is on the "income" to the surviving heirs and doesn't include the entirely tax-free transfer of an estate to a surviving spouse. In many cases, there are massive capital gains from long-held securities or property. If there was no estate tax there would be no reconciliation of those capital gains. If you think the rich should be able to pile up wealth upon wealth with no tax, that's your privilege, but as long as working stiffs pay a social security tax on their first dime of income and an income tax soon thereafter, I'm going to argue for a tax on inherited wealth, capital gains, and un-earned income. Our system requires poor and middle income people to bankrupt themselves to get medicaid to help with nursing home care. If we think it's okay to destory the inheritance for poor and middle class folks, I frankly don't give a rat's ass if we tax the inheritance of the rich.

Now for the better, sweeter, and more reasonable arguments. Nothing is more destructive to the self worth of an individual than being superfluous. If society doesn't need you, you might lead a life of idle abandon wasting your time on wine, women and song. That's not the American way, bro, and I won't let that cruel fate happen to you. Wise wealthy families leave their heirs enough not to starve, but not a lot more. Work is rewarding and fulfilling in its own right and everyone should have the opportunity to know that. I'm taking your money for your own damn good and you should thank me for it.

Second, massive wealth is corrupting our political system. We have a handful of senators worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What do they know about my life or yours? Nothing. They haven't been hungry or cold or wrapped in bitter argument over where the next food dollar is coming from. There is a distancing that only money can buy, and it does. A corollary argument is that your peers also are people with more money than connection with regular folks. You start to do foolish things like voting for an estate tax repeal rather than a prescription drug benefit or a Plan E (for everyone--thanks Kucinich) for Medicare. Worst of all, you might actually start to believe that cutting taxes and increasing spending is smart economics. I've got two words for you: Voodoo Economics. straight from Bush 41's lips to your ears. Look at any decent graph of the deficit and debt and you'll see that Clinton saved the nation's ass by balancing spending and taxes. Bush 43 is as big a disaster as Reagan for the economy and when you start believing that Bush makes sense, you are in deep trouble. Remeber, this is the guy who asked the President of Brazil if "he had blacks, too?".

Finally, and this is an argument I make with little relish, the business elite have become fatally corrupted with greed. Not garden variety gimme, but avariciousness on an apocalyptic scale. Cheating New York children out of sales tax on your Monet purchase tops my current list of sleazy crimes, but Enron crooks numbered in the hundreds, some of them now in the administration. Ripping off California, cheating on taxes, or Stanley-like, leaving the country to avoid taxes altogether. We're at war, boys and girls, and people who stay "out of harm's way" to quote Pres. Bush, and companies and individuals who dodge every effort at even nominal taxation are not the heroes we want or need in America.

I'm all for a 3 million buck exemption on your estate. After that, screw it. If you weren't smart enough to give it away to charity, libraries, education, churches, or your favorite animal shelter, your kids don't deserve it. Besides, there's a whole body of Biblical lore advising you that you're never going to make it into Heaven if you're loaded. We're doing you a favor. Enjoy it.
posted by Dave on 3:46 PM | 0 comments link

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