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A 25% inheritance tax, i.e. lose everything your family worked for in just four generations. That's ignoring inflation. The logical conclusion of the idea that

A 25% inheritance tax, i.e. lose everything your family worked for in just four generations. That's ignoring inflation. The logical conclusion of the idea that where you are born is just an "accident", and you have no legitimate link to your ancestors.

rayiner 3y ago
That’s incorrect—you’re ignoring growth during each lifetime.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
I think you need to go back to eighth grade math.
- Bran_son 3y ago
  Fine, lose (1 - 0.75^4) = 68% of everything. Plus what is lost to inflation. Thank you for such meaningful criticism.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    IMO the government is responsible for more than 25% of the vast majority of people's savings, so a 25% inheritance tax sounds fair. Maybe a few people really were innovative enough to have earned more than 75% without the government but that number is small enough to not matter. Your comment suggesting that losing 68% after 100 years is similar to keeping 0% is very strange to me, those don't seem similar at all. And then the 68% doesn't even account for growth, which has always been greater than inflation in the past. Generally the idea that people 100 years from now should be able to live off the labor their ancestors did 100+ years ago seems absurd to me. Those people did nothing to deserve that wealth.
    - xyzzyz 3y ago
      > IMO the government is responsible for more than 25% of the vast majority of people's savings OK, how about this: I pay zero taxes in my lifetime, and then government can take 25% of the estate after I die. What do you think of that?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        I think income taxes should be zero. The government should be funded mainly from land value tax, since land belongs to society as a whole and not some individual who was passed it by someone who never had the right to claim it in the first place. VAT and Pigouvian taxes are good options too. In the end the government has to be funded somehow, the only question is how? Taking money from those who did not earn it seems the best option to me.
  - loeg 3y ago
    You're ignoring any growth in invested value during inheritors' lifetimes.
dctoedt 3y ago
> lose everything your family worked for You're assuming your family is entitled to keep forever everything that it happens to have received in its economic activities. Elizabeth Warren famously said in her first Senate campaign, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did." [0] In his book The Economists' Hour, NY Times economics columnist Binyamin Appelbaum argues that free-market icon Milton Friedman "celebrated drivers and took roads [and cars and gasoline and ....] for granted." [1] Some would doubtless argue that the "free market" takes care of all this via pricing. But the "free market" really isn't; companies strive mightily, and often successfully, to seize pricing power and use it to extract rents. [0] https://newrepublic.com/article/95247/elizabeth-warren-class-warfare-taxes-rich-public-investment https://newrepublic.com/article/95247/elizabeth-warren-class... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Fracture/dp/031651232X https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Frac...
- Bran_son 3y ago
  > You're assuming your family is entitled to keep forever everything that it happens to have received in its economic activities. That would be ignoring income taxes and VAT. And I'm well aware of the failures of the free market. But they do not make inheritance illegitimate, as this article tries to frame it. It's that framing that is most offensive, more than a reasonable (i.e. much much less than 25%) inheritance tax: that taxation is not a compromise between property rights and free trade on one hand, and the public good on the other, with both being desirable values that are sometimes in opposition, but that it is a punishment for unearned wealth. With the hate for the wealthy expanded far beyond the 1%, to everyone that bought a house before the housing market explosion. I'm sure if the target of this hateful rhetoric was some other group, you'd quickly see its danger.

rayiner 3y ago

That’s incorrect—you’re ignoring growth during each lifetime.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

I think you need to go back to eighth grade math.

Bran_son 3y ago
Fine, lose (1 - 0.75^4) = 68% of everything. Plus what is lost to inflation. Thank you for such meaningful criticism.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  IMO the government is responsible for more than 25% of the vast majority of people's savings, so a 25% inheritance tax sounds fair. Maybe a few people really were innovative enough to have earned more than 75% without the government but that number is small enough to not matter. Your comment suggesting that losing 68% after 100 years is similar to keeping 0% is very strange to me, those don't seem similar at all. And then the 68% doesn't even account for growth, which has always been greater than inflation in the past. Generally the idea that people 100 years from now should be able to live off the labor their ancestors did 100+ years ago seems absurd to me. Those people did nothing to deserve that wealth.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    > IMO the government is responsible for more than 25% of the vast majority of people's savings OK, how about this: I pay zero taxes in my lifetime, and then government can take 25% of the estate after I die. What do you think of that?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      I think income taxes should be zero. The government should be funded mainly from land value tax, since land belongs to society as a whole and not some individual who was passed it by someone who never had the right to claim it in the first place. VAT and Pigouvian taxes are good options too. In the end the government has to be funded somehow, the only question is how? Taking money from those who did not earn it seems the best option to me.
- loeg 3y ago
  You're ignoring any growth in invested value during inheritors' lifetimes.

dctoedt 3y ago

> lose everything your family worked for You're assuming your family is entitled to keep forever everything that it happens to have received in its economic activities. Elizabeth Warren famously said in her first Senate campaign, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did." [0] In his book The Economists' Hour, NY Times economics columnist Binyamin Appelbaum argues that free-market icon Milton Friedman "celebrated drivers and took roads [and cars and gasoline and ....] for granted." [1] Some would doubtless argue that the "free market" takes care of all this via pricing. But the "free market" really isn't; companies strive mightily, and often successfully, to seize pricing power and use it to extract rents. [0] https://newrepublic.com/article/95247/elizabeth-warren-class-warfare-taxes-rich-public-investment https://newrepublic.com/article/95247/elizabeth-warren-class... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Fracture/dp/031651232X https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Frac...

Bran_son 3y ago
> You're assuming your family is entitled to keep forever everything that it happens to have received in its economic activities. That would be ignoring income taxes and VAT. And I'm well aware of the failures of the free market. But they do not make inheritance illegitimate, as this article tries to frame it. It's that framing that is most offensive, more than a reasonable (i.e. much much less than 25%) inheritance tax: that taxation is not a compromise between property rights and free trade on one hand, and the public good on the other, with both being desirable values that are sometimes in opposition, but that it is a punishment for unearned wealth. With the hate for the wealthy expanded far beyond the 1%, to everyone that bought a house before the housing market explosion. I'm sure if the target of this hateful rhetoric was some other group, you'd quickly see its danger.