Honestly, this seems grossly un-American at the most basic levels. A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death? Legal prohibitions against the purchase of real estate past a certain point?
I'm assuming you are aware of all this but I've been unable to deduce either your real question or your point. Can you elaborate?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/david-cameron/scotl...
Everything isn't eventually owned by the state, because they periodically sell off bits of public land, and gain possession of others.
That's an oversimplification; he thought that there was no right to inheritance, and that any inheritance allowed ought to be viewed as a privilege granted at the discretion of the public (by way of their elected government), with whatever conditions and limitations s the public chose to impose.
It wasn't that the property should become community owned as that the deceased owner had no rights to direct it's disposition after their death.
(He had fairly similar views on laws, including Constitutions: that, as the dead had no right to rule over the living, laws, however fundamental, ought to expire each generation unless positive action was taken to renew them, so that—within the limits of practicality—the living were governed by rules they participated in forming, not by the hand of the dead.
Interested in your comments on the medical-industrial complex as applies to people with less than, say, $10M net worth at retirement. Which is only about 99.9% of the population.
My grandparents were like that. Low level limousine liberals, a couple million net worth, retire at 60, a couple chronic diseases which were kinda expensive, a couple very expensive acute diseases, by the death of my grandmother a good 30 years later, pretty much nothing left. They spent their first 30 in the great depression and WWII so they really had only 30 years of good times to save up for 30 years of retirement. Personally I've never been alive during good times, I wonder what it was like?
Also interested in your views on the invention of retirement as a 19th century concept. It never existed before that time, never existed outside a small number of white countries. I don't think the "standard American retirement" such as experienced in the 1900s is going to be experienced much outside the 1900s or across the entire world. Historically inheritance was a white nobility concept, and not all nobility, in all white countries, all the time, had inheritable titles and estates. The fact that the prince of England inherited his title from the King of England upon death is kind of a stretch to claim that proves some random bubba in America is owed grandpa's old car upon his death.
> Personally I've never been alive during good times, I wonder what it was like?
If that's actually true you can't be more than 18-20 years old at the absolute most. I'm not that much older than you (31) but I didn't know a damn thing about retirement or elder healthcare when I was 20. I'm willing to bet when I'm 50 I'll say I didn't know a damn thing when I was 40.
"Good times" are relative, anyway. Most of the people reading HN are not terribly effected by the overall US economy. Oh sure your SV startup gig might pay you $150k instead of $180k. But the folks here are almost exclusively students or in the top 4-5% of income nationally. Nobody here bags groceries for a living and is one paycheck away from collections on their car or a foreclosure. Those are the people for whom the broader economy has real implications.
I'm not claiming that estate inheritance is divine providence or anything of the sort. But someone has to take possession of estate assets upon someone's death. I think it makes a lot more sense to a) give it to whom/whatever the decedent wishes in accordance with their will; or, b) next of kin. I'd like to think I'm pretty cognizant of my own ethnocentrism, and I'm sure that's more than a little to play here, but the idea that a "random bubba" is owed grandpa's old car makes the most sense to me when it's actually his grandpa and not just an old guy the next town over. Or even more so that it's not the state taking it and just selling it to the public.
Just to pick on this, as HN is an international forum; I doubt this holds true much outside of the US. For example, in many European countries an average teacher enjoys a higher salary than an average programmer.
For instance, I am a public school teacher. I certainly make more than a grocery bagger, but many of the HN readers to whom you're referring probably spent more on their last car than I make in a year.
This recent thread offers some nice perspective on why people like me are on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13668870
I'm an older gen-x when you were born I was a young teen biologically possible for you to be a generation younger than me but its stretching the definition.
The income level is about right, I'm precisely at the 95th percentile where I live. For me, times are good and will stay that way until the inevitable wave of income inequality reaches me, I'll go down later than a lot of people but it hits everyone eventually. Being poor is going to be interesting. I was as a student. It'll be like a second childhood kinda, I suppose.
In America, the default assumption is not that the government owns something until proven otherwise.
First, the idea of declaring this un-American is grossly un-American itself. "We, the people" and "promote the general Welfare" seems to come somewhat before "mine, mine, MINE!" in the Constitution.
Second, Native Americans (and Puerto Rico) are fine with the idea of community property - which deals with your last point. I suppose you could declare them un-American, that's a very American thing to do, so you've got that going for you.
If you'd like to criticise this on the merits, go ahead - there's plenty of room. (For starters, a 100% estate tax will leave dependents destitute). But I'd be happy if HN could be kept free of the unthinking flag-waving approach.
Someone's estate is theirs to do with what they see fit, including after their death. It is, after all, their property. If they want to donate it to the state or fund a foundation/non-profit, or give it all to their children, that is their right.
The state should not take ownership of my home, my bank accounts, and my assets simply because I die.
Presently in the U.S. inheritence is as you say it should be. It doesn't have to be this way and this way is not the only ethical or American way of dealing with inheritance. Indeed, Jefferson disagreed with what you wrote.
Also, I presented no scenario and have given no indication on what my beliefs on the issue are. I just said that a 100% estate tax would not necessarily leave surviving family members destitute. This is not disputable.
It's not necessarily a bad idea to edit production live. It's not necessarily a bad idea to have JavaScript on the server.
I agree that a 100% estate would not necessarily leave surviving family members destitute. However it absolute would leave some (another weasel word when you don't have data) family member completely without a means of support.
My use of the word 'necessarily' was to highlight that we are talking about very small numbers. Indeed, it is disingenuous to bring up people with Down Syndrome who have wealthy parents into the conversation. It's such a small number of people. There are ways to help such people in a 100% estate tax society. There are ways to make legal exemptions based on extreme situations in a 100% estate tax society.
To say people will necessarily be destitute in a 100% estate tax society is wrong. It is bad thinking and indicates a poor understanding of public policy and potential remedies. It is wrong to say that absolutely at least one person would be destitute in a 100% estate tax society. It could be the case that this is true but it doesn't have to be the case.
One should strive to be accurate in how things are phrased.
This is your personal axiom; many others disagree, including myself. I think that if you want to give something to someone, you should have to actually give it to them. You should experience that loss.
Holding onto everything until it is of absolutely no use whatsoever to you, and then insisting that the wishes of someone who doesn't exist anymore should continue to apply to those physical goods? I don't consider that the same as you choosing to give something to someone, and don't see why it should be indulged.
"It is, after all, their property."
No it isn't. Dead people don't have property. It was their property, and if they wanted to give it to someone, they should have done that while they were alive.
There is a middle ground to be found here somewhere so that people don't give everything they own to their children, who promptly turn them out on the streets in an amusing but predictable turn of events, but the way estate taxes are going (i.e. ever more to the benefit of the very wealthy) is the wrong way.
Because I didn't "experience that loss," all of my wealth is now transferred to the state because I was randomly killed?
If I walk down the road and find $1 million I owe tax. If I win the the lottery I owe tax. If I work for the $1 million I owe tax. But if someone dies and I'm their heir I don't owe tax. To me if you didn't do anything to earn the money you ought to pay more tax than someone who did earn the money.
I don't advocate for a 100% estate tax but I be.ieve it should be much higher than it is in the U.S.
The money I earn is taxed. When I spend my after tax money to buy a car it gets taxed. The car dealership pays tax on the profit generated by my purchase even though I already payed income tax on the money I used to buy the car.
All money is "infinitely" taxed. When I find a million dollars on the street I owe tax on it. Why not when I get the money because someone died?
Extend to everything else anyone ever spends money on.
I can see a problem with this system.
That principle is that I believe that people should, broadly speaking, benefit from their own efforts, their own work, their own risks and indeed their own luck (and not the results of someone else's luck passed on by default because they get shot), and that we should aim for a society where this is the case and the opportunities to do so exist; not to benefit by default because someone else died rich.
As I said, there's a middle-ground to be found, perhaps in this case based on the belief that had you not been shot you would have given to your children for education or other such, and that can be accounted for (on the other hand, if you knew that in the event of your death, all your stuff goes back in the pot rather than to your children, perhaps you'd have bought some insurance against this event). If you make it to the age of 90 and you're still holding onto all your stuff, it's another matter.
In terms of middle-ground, if we're talking a few thousand dollars, it's not such a big deal. If we're seeing the rich get richer in each generation through accumulation of capital and passing it on, creating a new society of aristocracy and peasantry, it's a bigger deal.
Is your objection to this moral (you disagree with my position that people should principally benefit from their own success in life) or practical (you think rich people will find dodges)? I'm certainly not convinced it could be done, but I think we can do better than where we seem to be going with the concentration of wealth through completely unearned income.
[1] Tax law specifies that as a gross annual income of $4,050. Which in itself is probably debatable, but is certainly well below "making your own living".
I remember this from my citizenship test and always find it interesting that the people who quote the constitution all the time never use this phrase.
It is not a blank check to let the Government take everything it needs in order to provide everything everyone wants.
Look at the size of the Federal Government before World War I (meaning, for more than a hundred years after the writing of the Constitution). Look at the lack of even an income tax before 1913 (except for briefly during the Civil War, IIRC). If you're going to argue that "promote the general welfare" meant redistribution, you're going to have to argue that for over a hundred years, everyone forgot about that and the government didn't do its job.
But if you say that it's an explanation of the overall intent (as understood by the people of the time), but with a meaning that falls far short of large scale redistribution, then the historical actions of the Federal government make perfect sense, and the current understanding of that phrase is what's out of line.
I was arguing against redistribution because maehwesu raised that point (seven posts upthread from this one). I misread your comments as arguing that redistribution was the intended meaning of "promote the general welfare".
There are all sorts of systems people use to structure around the existing taxes - life insurance, gifts, family companies, trusts, marriages, etc. Unless you sweep away the whole lot (disastrously disruptive in itself), people are going to work round it.
My problem with the idea is if it /works/. How does all of that stuff find its way back into the hands of people that can make the most use of it?
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iYKXYgSAaLsC&pg=PA311&lp...
The result is that poor and unprepared get hit by the tax, while rich people that live longer and are more educated shelter themselves of it.
It is my opinion that people are truly ingenious and forcing them to do something will be met with tremendous resistance.
A 100% tax on the estate when someone dies seems totally legit. They're not going to need it, wherever they're going. If they want to give it to their kids before they die, then we can kick in the ol' gift tax or income tax.
That way we can make sure we don't have wealthy families where money ends up concentrated, decade after decade, displacing a disproportionate amount of political power.
There's nothing more un-American than a wealthy ruling class.
If you put a 100% estate tax, then you're preventing people from working towards one of the biggest goals they work for, i.e. their kids.
Also, if a parent doesn't wanna give his wealth to his kids, no court in America would force the estate to go to the kids.
In other words, nobody is born rich, it's the rich individuals who make their kids rich.
The wealthy individuals are choosing to spend their money as they please. That happens to be by making wealthy some non-wealthy individuals.
In the case of this argument it's parents/children, but it doesn't have to be. The parents choose of their own free will. And they can choose to spend the money instead. Many do. Most, probably.
As I mentioned, the expiring bill would increase consumption but it would also be "wasteful". Someone unable to leave a business to a son might be tempted to build a huge gold statue in the middle of nowhere. Luxury goods would become a much more tempting market, even though the experiences they provide are of very limited value to society as a whole.
Also, figure all the big companies that couldnt exist because there is no legacy, every business owner would sell his business in life and frivolously spend all that money.
That is, if you were able to prevent people effectively from leaving money to their kids, which I assure you, its impossible.
Contrary to how people believe, you can't really 'hoard' money, when you hoard money, you merely invest in money itself, and like every investment, it gives society huge benefits (including, and especially the investor).
If you can place winning bets on how wealthy the parents were by how wealthy the children are long after the parents are gone, you are measuring unequal opportunity by the unequal outcomes.
I think some (statistically) unequal outcomes are unavoidable but the graph from 1940 shows that that we are moving drastically in the wrong direction.