3 ms·

On 1) there's been a ton of research on intergenerational social mobility, and it plays such a gigantic role that inheritance of capital has become inheritance

On 1) there's been a ton of research on intergenerational social mobility, and it plays such a gigantic role that inheritance of capital has become inheritance of socioeconomic status and all that it entails. And it's becoming a bit insane. Anyway it's not a death tax and I think it makes sense not to use the term too much. You die, your don't get taxed, you're dead. If you had no heirs, there'd be no taxation to be done because well hey you're dead. The taxation comes from inheritance. Calling it a death tax feels like screwing over old, vulnerable and well, dead people. But inheritance of even $100 is this money you never worked for, that you somehow deserve to have because someone related by blood just died. And if it's $100k I don't care much. But above that, it's insane to just get all this money you never worked for. I mean we don't do that for anything else, do we? We don't say 'oh your father was from a powerful family, he just died so here's 1 ticket to the best private school, 1 ticket to have people build you a house, 1 ticket to have doctors treat you for the rest of your life for free, 1 ticket to get all these fancy jobs' etc. It'd be pure nepotism. Yet when instead of a ticket, it's a bag of a ridiculous amount of money (say a few million), that can buy the equivalent of all those tickets, it's completely fine. And talking about a tax on that, so that if you inherit $100k you keep it all, but if you inherit $2m you only keep $500k (yeah, pretty aggressive), makes total sense to me. I mean that $500k is still a mind boggling advantage over those without it, you're basically carefree and set up until you're past 30 without any financial issues and any education you want, and the ability to take measured risks. I guess to some extent it's a self-reproducing issue. In an unequal society, if I had $10m, I'd want my kid to have it. In an equal society, I'd want my kid to have $50k and do his very best. Like here in the Netherlands I couldn't care less if my kid didn't inherit a whole bunch of money, university is essentially free, as is healthcare, subsidies exist for housing, if you work hard and have parents to guide you, money isn't a top factor (although it plays a role, always). But in the states I'd be really concerned for my kids as a poor parent, and if I happened to be rich and about to die, I'd really want to leave them wealth because it plays such a big role in social mobility.

wtbob 11y ago
> But above that, it's insane to just get all this money you never worked for. It's the person who worked hard for it who's giving it to his heirs. It's not money falling from the sky.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  So what, it doesn't change a thing. The person dies, now other people, not him, receive money that they did not work for, in the order of millions, which completely changes equal the rules of an equal opportunity system, transfers social mobility without merit, advantages a person over everyone else based on luck, not merit, and creates huge inequalities that are again, not based in merit. It's the opposite of the American dream, that social mobility is gained by working hard, instead it happens to be mostly inherited and those unequal inheritances create barriers for everyone else's social mobility. That's why it ought to be limited more than it is now. For example, the estate tax in 2001 was less than $700k exempted, above that you paid 55%. So you could get more than half a million tax free, and if you got say 5 million more, you'd keep another 2.5 million. It's still a gigantic advantage over everyone else to inherit $675k tax free, and half of anything above that. (I inherited money myself, and it's ludicrous). By 2008 the figure shot up to $2m exempt from taxes, and the tax rate above that dropped to 45%. And then a weird thing happened, it went to $5m by 2011 and the rate dropped further, to 35%. Today it's beyond even that, and it's starting to get insane. Now look at what that means. Imagine inheriting $5m and putting it towards stocks, which have a long term average ROI of 7%, already inflation adjusted. You'd get an annual salary of $350k, taxed low by the way because top capital gains tax rates are much lower than top tax rates on labor. Imagine 'receiving' a ticket for a lifetime (inflation-adjusting & compounding) $350k income-per-year like that from someone else who actually worked for it (or guess what, inherited it himself), would you ever have to work? Would you have a difficult time increasing that money while spending $100k on yourself per year, without working? Would you be able to give away more money at the end of your life than you received, without ever working? Would receiving this financial claim over other people's future work (a definition of money) based on blood right be akin to medieval nepotism? Would this create a system not just with unequal outcomes, but with inequality by design? The answer to all these questions is yes. Which is why it's time to consider reforming estate tax. I'm sympathetic to receiving and giving part of your wealth to others without the government stepping in. And we can keep that to large amounts, like say $100k. But there have to be limits, and the limit of $5.5m and just a 40% tax above that like we have today, is way too high.
  - wtbob 11y ago

wtbob 11y ago

> But above that, it's insane to just get all this money you never worked for. It's the person who worked hard for it who's giving it to his heirs. It's not money falling from the sky.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
So what, it doesn't change a thing. The person dies, now other people, not him, receive money that they did not work for, in the order of millions, which completely changes equal the rules of an equal opportunity system, transfers social mobility without merit, advantages a person over everyone else based on luck, not merit, and creates huge inequalities that are again, not based in merit. It's the opposite of the American dream, that social mobility is gained by working hard, instead it happens to be mostly inherited and those unequal inheritances create barriers for everyone else's social mobility. That's why it ought to be limited more than it is now. For example, the estate tax in 2001 was less than $700k exempted, above that you paid 55%. So you could get more than half a million tax free, and if you got say 5 million more, you'd keep another 2.5 million. It's still a gigantic advantage over everyone else to inherit $675k tax free, and half of anything above that. (I inherited money myself, and it's ludicrous). By 2008 the figure shot up to $2m exempt from taxes, and the tax rate above that dropped to 45%. And then a weird thing happened, it went to $5m by 2011 and the rate dropped further, to 35%. Today it's beyond even that, and it's starting to get insane. Now look at what that means. Imagine inheriting $5m and putting it towards stocks, which have a long term average ROI of 7%, already inflation adjusted. You'd get an annual salary of $350k, taxed low by the way because top capital gains tax rates are much lower than top tax rates on labor. Imagine 'receiving' a ticket for a lifetime (inflation-adjusting & compounding) $350k income-per-year like that from someone else who actually worked for it (or guess what, inherited it himself), would you ever have to work? Would you have a difficult time increasing that money while spending $100k on yourself per year, without working? Would you be able to give away more money at the end of your life than you received, without ever working? Would receiving this financial claim over other people's future work (a definition of money) based on blood right be akin to medieval nepotism? Would this create a system not just with unequal outcomes, but with inequality by design? The answer to all these questions is yes. Which is why it's time to consider reforming estate tax. I'm sympathetic to receiving and giving part of your wealth to others without the government stepping in. And we can keep that to large amounts, like say $100k. But there have to be limits, and the limit of $5.5m and just a 40% tax above that like we have today, is way too high.
- wtbob 11y ago