What's wrong with redistribution of wealth?
Isn't that the purpose of having an economy?

Here's an actual example.
An old guy married his cleaning woman, he died she inherited his estate.
She had to pay the estate taxes.
The house had to be sold, she didn't want it anyway, it's now a golf club.
Fortunately the yard was big enough to put in an 18 hole golf course.
Here's a link where you can see the 42,000 sq ft single family home.
TPC at Jasna Polana - Home Page
Look at it on google maps, at the highest magnification you can't even fit the whole house on the screen, a little to the east is a school athletic facility, you can compare the house to a football field, the house is larger.
The poor maid still had enough money to return to her native Poland and buy the Gdansk shipyard, and she now lives (happily I assume) in Monaco.

I am trying to find a "victim", but I'm having a problem..........

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

"Everything" and "no"

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Hope is the opposite of audacity. It's passive, an excuse for inaction.

Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

“What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”

“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let's be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.

“The other kills her own food.”

I don't think capital gains taxes should have slashed on wealthy corporations like it has been in recent years, along with the biggest wholesale theft from individuals going into corporate subsidies. Airlines, big polluters, corporations that slash and burn American jobs with benefits to move them to cheaper foreign labor markets. It's ridiculous.

Bush made a huge mistake, first of all, by not repealing his tax breaks early on when we decided to have two wars. That was a no-brainer, and now we're borrowing billions from the Chinese. But then Bush passed capital gains tax cuts for corporations, and many of those were retro-active to the decade before he was even President.

If you're going to do all that, you can't get rid of or lower the death tax, which I find to be repugnant. You can't have both and print money out of thin air.

The books in America could have balanced these last 7 years, even with the two wars. But there was not an ounce of national sacrifice by anyone other than the military families.

So all the people who think the death tax is unfair should be angry with this President for not bringing us to a place where we could get close to cutting that. What Bush has actually done is raised your taxes in the future by mismanaging things now.

Well, like Thomas Paine, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, I support an estate tax.
My reasoning is that the market system is an artificial construct, that doesn't always work right.
And that it makes perfect sense to address the inequities of the economic system through the political system.

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

True, but I can safely say that >60% of what the government does is unnecessary, and often detrimental to our society. (At the federal level, on a dollar basis.)

The gov't is there to collect it's share of your $1K from the Casino - It's a win-win for them. (Perhaps because they wrote the rules?)

[quote]What's wrong with redistribution of wealth? Isn't that the purpose of having an economy?[quote]A lot, and not in the least.

(Emphasis mine) Well, you picked an example where the victim had more good fortune than bad, so it was easy to overlook her victim status. If I win some long-shot bet in Vegas and win a few million dollars and some burglar (or housekeeper?) promptly pockets my new $10K Rolex, I'm still a victim, even if it's completely overshadowed by the positive aspects of the situation.

But what if the woman in question Wanted to keep the house? What if she wasn't a recent wife, but instead had toiled for years to support her husband's rise to wealth? What if the her circumstances weren't such that she could take the remainder of her inheritance to a foreign country and thereby significantly increase the buying power of what wasn't taken from her? Certainly, death tax opponents tend to cherry pick situations to support their position, but putting forth a 1-in-100K longshot situation is closer to reality than a 1-in-100M longshot.

True, but that's been standard procedure in Washington for decades now. (Not to defend W, just place additional blame where it belongs, which is pretty much most of DC.)

While any economic system other than anarchy (which may not count, since it is by definition a non-system) is indeed an artificial contruct, market capitalism is the one closest to natural, at least on a large scale. And no, it doesn't always work right, but every instance I can think of where it didn't on a macro level, it has been Because of the political system.

Yes, it seems unfair that some 'trust fund babies' never have to work a day in their lives, but that is simply a larger version of the inequities of the kids that got (better) cars for their 16th birthday, or didn't have to work thru college, or had a clown at their birthday party. If they truly don't work a day in their lives, it's unlikely that they'll be able to pass such largess on to their children, and even less likely to pass much onto their grandchildren. A former supervisor was friends with the Moens (or Kohlers? Some famous name in plumbing, or at least building materials). You'd never know it to look at them, since they were fairly average upper middle class people. Two to three generations along, most fortunes are squandered and/or diluted below the level of significance, and they were no exception; where there are exceptions, it's because the following generations actively worked at maintaining or increasing the fortune. The 'silver spoon playboys (or bimbos)' that death-taxers point to as evidence of the unfairness of inheritence aren't good examples, since they're self-correcting.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

[quote=Evil_inKarlate;1255623]True, but I can safely say that >60% of what the government does is unnecessary, and often detrimental to our society. (At the federal level, on a dollar basis.)

The gov't is there to collect it's share of your $1K from the Casino - It's a win-win for them. (Perhaps because they wrote the rules?)

[quote]What's wrong with redistribution of wealth? Isn't that the purpose of having an economy?So if someone works and earns money, it's ok to tax it, if they own stock and collect dividends it's OK to to tax it (but at a much lower rate), and if they get the money because their father died, they should get all of it, and any unrealized gains should be zeroed out to cancel out any tax liability that may have accrued to the now dead father.

Because it's not fair to burden the owners of football teams with the same level of burdensome taxation that the guy who sells hot dogs in the stadium pays.................

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

If the Steelers are going to get "sacked" because of the estate tax than they deserve to fail.

A sports team making that much cash has many ways of re-investing it in their franchise in ways that they can write expenses off or make other investments that will grow over time.

Can't really feel sorry for a major sports franchise, especially one in the NFL, where there is far more parity between all the teams than in practically all the other professional sports leagues.

It is not triple taxed Iam.

Revenues minus certain deductions will calculate the taxable income. On that taxable income, the net will be taxed. The deductions would include cost of goods sold, deductions for paying employee wages and employer payroll taxes, depreciaiton for using building and equipment for business, and other deductions. Furthermore, what you listed are incorporated into several different jurisdicitons such as federal, state, and local. And even those taxes that you pay end up as a deduction on your corporate tax return. Thus, by the time you calculate all the deducitons that a company can tax plus certain business credits, the tax in ratio to an the income tax is only taxed once.

However, our high corporate tax rates provide a disincentive to compete abroad and why the government has to be creative for MNC, import/export companies, and global retail sales companies, among others. We should follow what Ireland did in the 1990's.

As for the Steeler family, given the wide variety of tax strategies to lower the estate tax, some of the blame may lay on them. However, without knowing the past estate strategies that may have been used, it is entirely possible that GST, generation skipping tax, may play a huge role in this. Of course, I am speculating on this.

As for the estate tax, it needs to be revamped. I do not believe it should be abolished since it is the longest tax scheme this government has had. To be more equitable, the compromise of last year seemed promising.

Jason,
The estate tax has nothing to do with income. It is an excise tax based purely on taxing cumulative wealth at FMV.

I'm not so sure it's ok, but let's say yes for the moment...

I've always found the resetting of the basis (the starting purchase price for capital gains purposes, for those who don't speak 'tax') upon inheritance to be a strange beast. I'd say it makes more sense to give the heirs the option of inheriting the basis along with the asset or to get the appropriate capital gains tax liability along with the new basis. Instead, we have a weird system where, for some estates, there is a waiving of accrued liability like you describe (effectively a negative tax rate), and for others there is a confiscatory rate unless one takes specific and sometimes difficult steps to avoid it.

Ignoring for the moment that they Both deserve less of a burden, I agree with you. (Your point, not the literal reading of the sarcastic statement used to make the point.)

__________________
Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

Geez, it's a fucking football team, and an only slightly better than mediocre one, at that...

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