it looks like the article is just revealing a nasty republican plan, and no evidence of the plan working. The two senators in question should probably expect some letters.
To be fair, the story is that Republicans are trying to bribe Democrats from timber states with a provision that benefits timber companies. There's nothing in the story from a Democrat that says the bribe is going to work.
Still, we should all be writing Cantwell et al. and saying 'don't do it if you value your immortal soul.'
2 & 3 - OK, I feel a little bit better now. It'd better not work, dammit. If it does, we're storming the barricades.
Is the only reason the estate tax repeal isn't as radioactive as, say, social security, that most people don't realize how few estates are subject to to the tax?
Actually, their reduction in the tax rate paid above the exemption makes a lot of sense to me, as I always saw the estate tax as somewhat of a forced capital gains payout. Also, it makes me feel less bad about the economic efficiency losses while still keeping some redistribution.
That said, I think they should lower the exemption. There are very few estates too illiquid to pay the tax even with the current higher rate and exemption of $2 million, and those businesses and farms actually get nice terms to pay out their taxes over many years instead of being forced to sell out.
But tax breaks to sweeten the deal? That's just stupid.
1) On one hand, I do not understand a theory of representation that would forbid Cantwell from favoring the interests of her consituents. A senate comprised of 100 at-large Senators would be worse than our present system.
2) There would have to be a calculation as to how many of her constituents are favored by this deal and how many disfavored. I can certainly imagine that this timber tax break affects jobs as well as profits.
3) There should be institutional and practical constraints on this behavior: a national President with perhaps a line-item veto (If Bush killed her pork, she would be less likely to trust deals); vicious and effective party discipline; a movement from amendments to separate bills, to make deals more obvious and difficult.
4) When Democrats held the majority, they did it too. In fact, it is hard for me to imagine any kind of representative system in which this kind of thing is not the very definition of politics.
Is the only reason the estate tax repeal isn't as radioactive as, say, social security, that most people don't realize how few estates are subject to to the tax?
I don't think so. The Republicans have been pretty successful at selling the idea that the tax is fundamentally unfair. It's just another incidence of the principle that no one ever went broke from underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
The Republicans have been pretty successful at selling the idea that the tax is fundamentally unfair.
True, though I also think it has something to do with people still believing in the American Dream. Americans are pretty incredible about their willingness to fight the right of the super-wealthy to keep their dough, presumably in the off chance that they themselves one day could be super-wealthy.
So, I guess Canadian softwood is still getting nailed with fat tarriffs into the next decade, eh?
Americans are pretty incredible about their willingness to fight the right of the super-wealthy to keep their dough, presumably in the off chance that they themselves one day could be super-wealthy.
I'm not sure that's it. I think that Republicans have convinced people that income or wealth earned is truly deserved, and solely a function of the efforts and abillities of the person who earned it. No one really believes that the single best thing most of us ever did for our income was to be born (or to live) in the US.
I love it when you talk dirty, JM.
16 -- I guess we'll be staining Canada's wood mahogany for the next decade, eh?
I favor repealling the estate tax because it seems likely that Bush-style budgetary policy in the US could ultimately bring down the entire capitalist mode of production. That's also why I like the "clever" strategy of running Hillary in 2008 (i.e., losing on purpose), thus forcing Republicans to "clean up their own mess" -- we all know the Republicans won't, and so the complete collapse of the global speculative economy is a near-certainty.
The only problem is that in the US, there will be no means of production, nor any workers to seize control of them.
19: You know, Kotsko, I admire your thoughts on Pavement, but that old "heighten the contradictions" bullshit is, well, bullshit, and profoundly immoral to boot.
Of course maybe I'm misreading your sarcasm.
You know that the next step is the Great North American Woodie Wars, right, M/tch?
I think that Republicans have convinced people that income or wealth earned is truly deserved, and solely a function of the efforts and abillities of the person who earned it.
I certainly think that's part of the picture, but I also have to believe that at least some of the people who support repealing the estate tax understand the difference between "earned" and "inherited" wealth. And the only explanation I can think of for those who do is that they must be holding out hope that they will win the lottery, or get left a fortune by their long-lost Uncle Whoozits, or make a killing day-trading.
t I also have to believe that at least some of the people who support repealing the estate tax understand the difference between "earned" and "inherited" wealth.
If I bought the line I was selling above, I'd say that if Person X earned the money, he ought to be able to do with it what he wants, including leaving it to his kid. That is, the important thing isn't the person who inherits the money, but rather how that money was initially acquired by the person from whom it is inherited.
That link in 17 contains this quote:
A poll conducted by Time/CNN on the estate tax issue in 2000 revealed that 39 per cent of Americans believe that they are either in the wealthiest 1 per cent or will be there ‘soon’.
I also remember seeing polling results that the overwhelming majority of people in the very top percentiles of income still consider themselves "middle class".
23 -- Just last night I read Chapter XXXVI of Bleak House, which ends with Miss Flite telling Esther how the chancery destroys people, and alluding to Richard who is in the process of being consumed by chancery. The people who are holding out hope they will win the lottery or etc. are in the same position as Richard.
Mitch, Actually, I'm holding out hope that the US will become communist simply by virtue of being entirely bought out by the Chinese.
This was Marx's failure of imagination -- he didn't foresee an alternative to armed revolution or parliamentary victory by communist parties.
Ah, then we're on the same page then!
I also remember seeing polling results that the overwhelming majority of people in the very top percentiles of income still consider themselves "middle class".
Part of this is probably because their lifestyles may be much more similar (if often substantially better) to those of people in the middle-class than to those of people only a percentile or two above them.
If I bought the line I was selling above, I'd say that if Person X earned the money, he ought to be able to do with it what he wants, including leaving it to his kid. That is, the important thing isn't the person who inherits the money, but rather how that money was initially acquired by the person from whom it is inherited.
The problem being, of course, that this is a completely stupid way of thinking about the matter. The fact that I've earned money and paid taxes on it doesn't mean that the grocery store doesn't pay taxes on the same money when I spend it there. Our whole system operates on taxing the same dollars over and over again as they pass from person to person. Gifts and inheritances are just another form of income to the receiver, and a particularly ripe target for taxation at that.
30: That seems like a pretty good point. Maybe it's the difference between getting a gift and buying something?
19:Kotsko and his crew are my heros. Really.
20:Is it a comfort to know that what Kotsko describes is inevitable? Or at least as deterministic as the first half of the 20th century?
Who are immoral are the people who look at the political landscape and think we are going to a) grow our way out of debt just cause Americans are racially superior to the Chinese and Indians, or b) magically convert 40% of the voting public into high-taxers without catastrophic pain.
The deluge is inevitable: what isn't is apres le deluge. That also means America could, with the aid of soft-hearted and muddle-headed liberals, become Guatemala for a thousands years. The re-emergence of the welfare state right nows looks like a less likely scenario.
29: Also because 'class' is a topic not limited to economics. I'm a big lawfirm associate, which puts me in a semi-stupid income bracket. On the other hand, neither of my parents graduated from college (both went, my father to a remarkable number of different schools. Not so much with the commitment to academics, Dad.); my grandparents worked in the NY subway system; I have no familiarity with the manners and customs of the inherited-money upper class. I can't see what I can call myself except upper-middle class -- upper class doesn't make sense.
32: mcmanus, you fuck. You lost the series for us. Come the revolution, there will be many before you, but you're on my list.
(I've been nauseated all day because of the loss.)
Gifts and inheritances are just another form of income to the receiver, and a particularly ripe target for taxation at that.
And part of the problem is that people imagine their estate's tranference into their heirs' hands as a form of continued existence, whereas they will be, in fact, quite dead.
Maybe it's the difference between getting a gift and buying something?
I think it's mostly just an artifact of the way the tax system developed. Conceptually, gifts and inheritances are income to the receiver, but that conceptual structure wasn't well-developed (or at least wasn't well-understood by tax policymakers) at the time the income and transfer tax laws were coming in, so we ended up with two separate tax regimes. The fact that the estate tax is separate facilitates sloppy thinking about who's bearing the burden of the tax (i.e., the beneficiaries/donees) and makes it easy to demagogue, but conceptually it's just another form of income tax.
I tend to think that repealing the current estate and gift taxes and just including gifts and inheritances in the receiver's taxable income would be a very good thing, but of course there's no chance that's going to happen. (If anyone cares, I'd be OK with exempting the first $x per year for relatively low values of x and doing something about liquidity issues for in-kind gifts, but generally I think free money is about the very best kind to tax.)
32: Wishing misery on people so that the revolution will finally come and all will be right with the world is bullshit and profoundly immoral.
And could you please explain how what Kotsko describes is inevitable, and how it is that you know this to be so? Or how the first half of the 20th Century was deterministic, for that matter?
And lastly, can you lay some of your hard-hearted and clear-headed ideas on us so that we won't waste any time strengthening the levies and stocking up on provisions before the deluge?
33: there's also a regional costs thing that makes it tough to translate directly from income percentile to standard of living. We also look pretty good in terms of income statistics (although lawyers here aren't anything like as well-paid as lawyers there), but we could have a significantly higher material standard of living on significantly less money if we lived someplace that wasn't so crazy expensive.
29,33: Also because people's sense of 'class' is informed by comparison, and that requires a stable calculator. My parents' income bracket fluctuated between much better than middling and '0', averaging probably to somewhere in the middle, but my hometown had ridiculously cheap housing prices, so we had a decent-sized house. So growing up, I thought, man, we have a house, a huge backyard, some broken-down cars, that means we're upper middle class. On the other hand, J. Crew was the expensive store in town that moved in about when I graduated high school and I found out in college that 'upper middle class' didn't describe my family at all because those kids had $400 peacoats from J. Crew.
And now, I'm a grad student, which means I have no money, but I'm educated, which means I should count as having money, but I'm in the humanities, which means I won't ever have money, but I have healthcare and the university gym, which should count as money. Oh, and the education thing means developing more upper-class tastes, which I can't afford, exactly.
So, um. I'm not sure I have a reliable internal calculator when it comes to judging what the top 5% make. And I'm not sure that my experience is all that unique.
39: Yeah. The thing is that the lower/middle/upper class distinction used to be: works for a living/lives off capital (including working in a business one owns)/hereditary gentry or aristocracy living off income from land. None of this really makes sense in our society -- what does 'lower class' mean in America today as a descriptive term rather than a pejorative? So people give weird answers when asked about class.
39: The "upper-class tastes" thing is precisely why I spent my years in Kankakee developing a taste for Busch Light. Sadly, I was unable to complete this project, which proved to be considerably more difficult than developing an immunity to iocane powder.
37: The current situation is a disaster for probably 2/3 of the world's population. Also, the creation of the capitalist mode of production during the Industrial Revolution included such phenomena as age expectancies of 27 in Glasgow. (For reference, contemporary sub-Saharan Africa is doing way better than that.) Do you wish that it had never happened and we had somehow just "stayed" feudal? Or how about the French Revolution -- some pretty nasty shit, right? Did you want to just stick with absolutist monarchy, though?
Major social upheaval tends to kill a lot of fucking people -- so does, to a certain extent, the maintanence of any given situation (such as ours).
41: Man, you are totally kicking that strawman's ass.
Let's stipulate that Marx was a good analyst of history and accurately described the transition from feudalism to capitalism (I don't think he was or did, but let's just stipulate). That still tells us fuck-all about what's going to happen in the future, or whether if things get bad enough there will eventually be some good result. The current situation certainly is a disaster for the bulk of the earth's inhabitants, but I don't see where your faith that there's some magic next stage that will happen if the percentage of miserable people or the extent of their misery climbs high enough comes from.
Dude, you strawmanned me first. I don't follow rigorous discipline in matters of tone -- usually there's a mixture of irony and actual truth in what I'm saying, though the exact proportions are not completely clear to me -- but you got WAY too self-righteous about my comment. If you're supporting the status quo, you're supporting untold misery -- just because some hypothetical alternative would be worse doesn't change that basic fact.
I do think there's potential for the current budgetary policy of the United States to bring down the global speculative economy, simply because US debt stands at the base of so much of it. As for whether there will be a utopian society on the other side -- man, that would be awesome, wouldn't it? A major collapse like that might at least open up the space for people to try non-capitalist models -- as things stand, there are very few slivers of hope for that kind of thing (the resurgence of socialism in Latin America will presumably be "taken care of" once the US gets its ass out of Iraq and can get back to terrorizing poor people in its own damn hemisphere).
(BTW, I'm a little more Benjaminian than "vulgar Marxist" myself.)
but you got WAY too self-righteous about my comment.
Yeah, I know. I tried to soften/backpedal in 21.
It's just that in my experience that whole "actually this is good news!" thing has usually been spouted by people who are comfortably NOT on the receiving end of the pain they're all cheery about, and my knee jerks and I mouth off.
And as for supporting the status quo, well I don't, but I do believe in the efficacy of chipping away at problems instead of waiting for some fell swoop to come from somewhere and save everyone's ass (not that that wouldn't be nice). For comity's sake, let's call it "Brightening the Corners".
Also, I like Benjamin, lots, but he too has little to tell us about what comes after any future deluge.
As for whether there will be a utopian society on the other side -- man, that would be awesome, wouldn't it?
Is this earnest? Given everything you know about people and the nature of conflict, needs/wants...what's the chance of a human utopia? Pretty much nil, it seems to me. At least until we build enough robots to let us all be as lazy as we want, and still probably not even then.
As for whether there will be a utopian society on the other side -- man, that would be awesome, wouldn't it?
And it's always worked so well when it's been tried.
understand the difference between "earned" and "inherited" wealth
I think it's much simpler than this. I think it's that we've just completely internalized the idea that private property is sacrosanct, that "my" money is "mine" no matter how I got it, and that taxes amount to the government "taking" money away from people. We no longer think in terms of social contracts, and without that, the estate tax (along with most other taxes) seem fundamentally unfair to people.
I, for one, hope we don't turn into Guatemala. I think it's way more probable than the reinvention of the welfare state, but I'm pulling for the welfare state because I like being wealthier than most people in the world, inasmuch as that wealth means I feel pretty assured of being able to get enough food, being pretty healthy, and so on. I know this is morally wrong of me, but there it is. I don't want to lose my status any more than anyone at the top of the hierarchy ever does.
But if Adam can guarantee me that the revolution won't mean subsistience farming or watching PK die from AIDS some day, I'm right there behind him.
Policies that allow individuals to hold onto their money and do with it what they like may be economically efficient, but they are not particularly fair: many people will end up with less than they need and perhaps than they deserve. Progressive taxes, which are more equitable, are nevertheless not so efficient at generating future wealth.
This is the problem right there: the language about people "holding on to their money." If we thought about it as hoarding money rather than "holding on to" money that (implicitly) one already owns, it would make a big diference.
I think B makes a good point about people seeing it as "my" money and the government "taking" it. William Gates, Sr. (Bill's dad) is doing some good work with trying to reframe this to make a case for the continuation of the estate tax by talking about how, yes, these people earned their money but only because they were able to benefit from the opportunities that America provided. Without educated workers trained in public schools, an extensive and reliable highway infrastructure, stable communities protected from crime and other threats, etc., businesses wouldn't be as successful and that person never would have been able to earn their wealth. They owe it to their fellow citizens to repay the government for the services that allowed them to become successful so that other people will have the same opportunities they did. Instead of "taxes", he sometimes calls them "dues for being an American".
Here's Chuck Collins (heir to the Oscar Meyer fortune) saying it better than I just did:
We believe that people who accumulate great wealth also have been lucky, have had the benefit of growing up and living in the United States, and have benefitted from this enormous public investment.
One of our leaders in Responsible Wealth was standing next to President Clinton when he vetoed the repeal of the estate tax and he said, look, I grew up in New York City, I went to public schools and public libraries and museums. Someone else paid for those.
I went to a college; someone else paid for that. I went into the technology field, a whole infrastructure that had been built with public investment that someone else had paid for. I started a company and I hired professional people who had been trained through a subsidized education system. And I made $40 million. And you're telling me society doesn't have a claim on my wealth?
My mentioning of Guatemala has less to do with that nation's poverty relative to the rest of the world, and more to do with its stability. Perhaps a better example could be found. But oligarchical repressive societies with massive inequalities of wealth and power can be created that are nearly immune to internal dissension and external disruption. As long as the ruling families do not compete with each other, or seek monopolies of power, such societies can be indefinitely stable.
This is what, I believe, the Republican Party, an elite with many fools, intends. A neo-feudalism. The strategy and tactics include besides the obvious concentration of wealth, the offshoring of manufacturing, a housing bubble/collapse where developed land will be bought up by an elite at dirt cheap prices, a theocracy and control of media and information, etc.
Note that domestic food production is still protected. Seriously, an oligarchy that owns the farms and a slice of consumer goods manufactured overseas, and a workforce of serfs with no shot of social mobility living in rental properties terrorized by health-care debt and chits at the company store.
These are, after all, descendants of Jefferson Davis.
"think it's that we've just completely internalized the idea that private property is sacrosanct, that "my" money is "mine" no matter how I got it, and that taxes amount to the government "taking" money away from people."
That's kind of in the Constitution though: we're not supposed to trust the government, and it works for us. It's my money and if they want it they better give me a damn good reason. Privacy works a bit like this too; no, you don't get to know what I don't want you do and you work for me, dammit, don't you remember?
I'm not sure there was ever a time where people were pro-taxes or believed in a social contract. I'm pretty sure the popular perception of the American way is about giving the middle finger to the government whenever possible. *
Anyhow, the 'earned/inherited' distinction isn't what people see. Many, if not all people, work hard to make money so their kids don't have to scrabble up the same way they did. ('I didn't spend 80 hours a week in a dead end job so you could go to Harvard and major in art!') And the estate tax feels like one more weight keeping them down; not because it taxes their kids, but because it's taxing them. Middle fingers unite!
This is bullshit, of course, if you actually look at the tax, and who it hits, and how much it hits; but I think resistance to it taps into this feeling "So, I could work hard, and try to push my family up a tax bracket, and then I die, and all my hard work went for nothing?"
* Yes, I pay my taxes. Yes, I think that we get more ponies with social programs than without. I just don't think it's really historical or that we've lost a sense of a social contract.
That's kind of in the Constitution though
The last five years should have taught you that pretty much anything you want is "in the Constitution" if you have 51% of the vote. The document appears to be infinitely elastic, and the body public doesn't seem to care much about it anyway.
Well, there is that. But the idea that The Government Is Not Our Friend * resonates pretty strongly.
* Except when there's sex. Or terrorists. Maybe just economics.
53 - I think you do touch on a lot of the things that make people opposed to the estate tax. I think it's reasonable to let people pass money onto their kids to give them a head start in life. That head start shouldn't give them such an advantage that it perpetuates inequalities so that nobody else can catch up, though.
(On a side note, it's interesting to read the polls on the estate tax that groups have done. When they ask people whether they support the estate tax, most say no. But when they ask people if they support an estate tax that exempts the first $2M and only taxes the value above that [which is, in fact, the current law] most support it.)
Also, a person doesn't have to pay the estate tax. They can leave their money to a charity or church if they don't want the government to have it. I think that's a perfectly valid way of enforcing the same goal of "you couldn't have earned this were it not for the advantages you were given so you have to give something back".
That head start shouldn't give them such an advantage that it perpetuates inequalities so that nobody else can catch up, though.
I kinda feel like I'm just jumpin on the bandwagon with this - but, again, people may see your point here, but I think most are going to refuse this framing. They're just not as interested in social equality as in the fortunes of their own blood.
Also, practically speaking, there are a lot of ways to give money to your kids and get around the estate tax. I think David Cay Johnston has argued that, effectively, the estate tax really starts at about $5 million. Unfortunately, this is hard to argue. "Sure, it says $2million, but we expect people to figure out the loopholes, so.."..No, that doesn't work.
To be honest, I suppose I'd be fine with a compromise - stick the estate tax to start at $8 million. Or $10, since that's a round number.
The key may be redefining it from "the death tax" to "the multimillionaire tax."
To be honest, I suppose I'd be fine with a compromise - stick the estate tax to start at $8 million. Or $10, since that's a round number.
You really have to watch these assholes like a hawk. Two things are in play: the exemption amount and the basis step-up for inherited property. Some forms of "compromise" actually may end up working out better for most estate tax payers (although not the very top end) because they may end up paying a little bit of estate tax but greatly increase the amount of inherited property their heirs can sell without owing capital gains tax.
Why not, as DaveL mentioned above, just put a line on your 1040, 1099, 1040EZ, what have you that says, "have you recieved any inheritance income, as defined in [made up regulation #], in the past calendar year? If yes, see [made up form #].
Made up form # will say
Write the amount of inheritance income you have recieved in line A. If this number is greater than $3.5 million, continue to line B. If it's less than $3.5 million, return to your form 1040.
Write the amount line A exceeds $3.5 million in line B.
Write the product of line B and .45 in line C.
Add the amount in line C to the amount of your tax bill after all exemptions, deductions, and credits, have been taken.
Mail us a check. If writing a check for this amount causes liquidity problems for you, provide some credible of this and we will give you up to 10 years to pay the amount in line C.
25: A poll conducted by Time/CNN on the estate tax issue in 2000 revealed that 39 per cent of Americans believe that they are either in the wealthiest 1 per cent or will be there ‘soon’.
Aaargh! This is an urban legend. I'm too busy with the wallabies to dig up the citation but the actual poll said that 39 percent either thought they would benefit from Bush's tax cuts (maybe some specific cut) or would soon, and that that cut in fact only benefited the top 1 percent much. dsquared will agree with me, I think.
Still, 39 seems to get it right (ain't read the thread).
What you're all missing here is that taxes are theft, pure and simple. Why if the state would just wither away already, the economy would run more smoothly and we'd all be able to prosper according to our abilities and provide for ourselves enough to meet our needs.
61: Well, that makes more sense. I wondered how that question was phrased in the poll.
Well, the Constitution is also pretty solid on the idea of social compacts and the idea of a unified people/public. Whic supports the idea, again, that refusing to pay taxes to support the public good is a form of hoarding.
Everyone loves to hate the estate tax, but a few points:
1. The truly rich employ estate planning techniques to evade the tax. We aren't going to collect 40% of Larry Ellison's $15b.
2. Estate planning is the definition of uproductive activity. Anything that reduces it improves overall economic efficiency
3. The estate tax favors consumption and disfavors savings; for this reason, it is likely an inefficient way to raise revenue
4. Becks' 49 proves too much, or rather is a general argument for taxation, not an argument for any specific tax. No doubt we should all thank our lucky stars for being born in the US of A. But that's not an argument for a tax rate of Z%.
5. It is your money, you did earn it, and noting the roll of luck in human affairs is not a blanket justification (or, I would argue, much of a justification at all) for redistributionist policies.
6. There was no *income tax* when the constitution was ratified. Arguments from either the left or right that the "spirit" of the constitution speaks to a particular tax plan relevant to the post-progressive, post-New Deal regulatory and welfare state will, I suspect, inevitably be special pleading.
definition of uproductive activity.
I honestly don't know what that means. Why would anyone pay for something that was unproductive?
or rather is a general argument for taxation, not an argument for any specific tax. ....But that's not an argument for a tax rate of Z%.
All we need is the general argument. We don't have to argue by increment--that's what the political process is for.
It is your money, you did earn it, and noting the roll of luck in human affairs is not a blanket justification (or, I would argue, much of a justification at all) for redistributionist policies.
This is really the kicker. I think it's a pretty good justification; we may have different understandings of "earn." To be clear, it's not an argument for redistributionist policies; it's an argument removing against claiming that that redistributionist policies are immoral or wrong. You've got to justify the specific policy on its own terms.
From the standpoint of the economy, I mean -- paying someone to help you avoid taxes is just IQ and manpower down the drain...
Wait, what's wrong with favoring consumption? Isn't consumption good?
. The truly rich employ estate planning techniques to evade the tax. We aren't going to collect 40% of Larry Ellison's $15b.
Then why is a lobby consisting entirely of the very richest people in America spending tens of millions of dollars to eliminate the estate tax?
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/25/estate-18/
By the way, SCMTim, did you think the game 5 officiating a travesty?
It is your money, you did earn it
But your heirs didn't earn it.
1. The truly rich employ estate planning techniques to evade the tax. We aren't going to collect 40% of Larry Ellison's $15b.
2. Estate planning is the definition of uproductive activity.
68 - This can be solved by getting rid of the tax or by reducing the number of shelters and loopholes. I know which I prefer.
Ned: Estate planning is expensive. If I were a rich guy, I'd want to torpedo the estate tax too and not pay a management fee. But I think it is a mistake to think that the mega-rich currently pay 45% to the gov't on death.
Teofilo: Generally more savings = more economic growth. Tax policy that favors savings, or is at least neutral towards savings vs. consumption is for this reason usually preferred.
Generally more savings = more economic growth
I'm no economist, but my impression was that this has not been adequately demonstrated empirically. Do you have a cite?
Becks:
Sure, eliminate the loopholes. That sounds swell. But that's of course not the choice we have in front of us. The question is, do we want to get rid of a weird, distorting tax that generates 2% of revenue. I'd be pleased to. Would you instead agree to kill the estate tax and make it up by an increase in the income tax? We can even make it just in the top bracket. Comity may yet reign.
Nick:
But the question is who decides what happens to it. The egalitarian move from luck is to say "had you been borne otherwise, you would not be prosperous, thus, your prosperity depends on no merit of yours. thus, it can be redistributed." That last step is a non sequitur, I hope we can all agree. If we cannot, maybe we have the makings of a phun philosophy thread. Or I can just link Will Wilkinson's archives.
71: I don't want to talk about it. It's all mcmanus's fault.
Given the current state of government finances, I see no justification for getting rid of any taxes, no matter how distorting or how small a proportion of revenue.
But that's of course not the choice we have in front of us.
We don't have to make the choice in front of us.
But your heirs didn't earn it.
This only brings us back to the argument that reducing the right to give money to one's heirs is reducing the right you have to your own money.
This can be solved by getting rid of the tax or by reducing the number of shelters and loopholes. I know which I prefer.
Congress does patch up loopholes, but some techniques can be just hellish to try and and block. For instance, one way of bypassing the estate tax is to give away your estate, bit by bit, over a large period of years, to your heirs. Schemes can be dreamt up to stop this, but I think the problem is that they become very complicated.
That last step is a non sequitur, I hope we can all agree.
I don't. Wilkinson has a formalist argument that makes a series of assumptions about where our intuitions should be.
This only brings us back to the argument that reducing the right to give money to one's heirs is reducing the right you have to your own money.
I don't understand this argument. For the heirs, the estate is income. Shouldn't it be taxed at least as much as earned income?
If somebody's right to do as they wish with their money is interfered with by the estate tax...couldn't you say the same thing about an employer's right to give wages to an employee?
baa, how is eliminating the estate tax going to have a positive effect on savings? The only people the tax hits are quite rich, and thus a rather small part of the population. When we talk about a savings problem in this country, it's not those people who are being referred to. Hell, the rich probably should be parting with more of their money. Let's encourage trickle-down.
couldn't you say the same thing about an employer's right to give wages to an employee?
If you think parent-children is analogous to employer-employee.
Hey, when did Timbot start reading philosophy?
84: I think baa is saying that savings means more money available for useful investment; we don't care who does the saving, as long as the amount increases. But it's been a while since anyone has argued that capital is too expensive.
The egalitarian move from luck is to say "had you been borne otherwise, you would not be prosperous, thus, your prosperity depends on no merit of yours. thus, it can be redistributed." That last step is a non sequitur, I hope we can all agree.
Well, sure. There's no logical imperative to redistribute a certain type of money. However, the government still needs money in order to operate, and this is one of the ways to get it while inflicting minimal harm on citizens.
2. Estate planning is the definition of uproductive activity. Anything that reduces it improves overall economic efficiency
Le problem with this is that it seems a bit arbitrary - the rich spend money on fancy lawyers trying to figure out how to evade all of their taxes. At least, that's what I've been led to believe by some nefarious reporters.
The egalitarian move is that inherited wealth is offensive to egalitarianism, no?
I'm not sure it makes sense to say that estate planning is a totally bad thing -- my uninformed sense is that a lot of estate planning involves creations of charitable foundations and that this is one of the services the estate tax provides, in encouraging the grotesquely wealthy to will large parts of their fortunes to the public good rather than to their spawn.
This thread has veered drastically toward the right since I last posted.
Tim's 87 is what I had in mind. Any tax that punishes savings will lead to less savings. Less savings --> less investment --> less growth. The degree of this effect is no doubt controversial.
Michael, you're right that any tax will be evaded, and thus to a degree, will enable unproductive spending. The estate tax, I think is *particularly* unproductive in this regard.
Ned,
Right the question is what is minimal harm. I think the estate tax is a bad way to collect taxes, and that support for it derives mainly from a (mistaken) belief that it is a bulkwork of an egalitarian republic, and sticks it to Paris Hilton.
On the non sequitur. Here's one thing you could argue. None of us deserve anything, we all have what we have by luck. Should I take this as a) an argument that there is no right to property? b) an argument that there is no right to political power? c) an argument that there are no *rights*, d) a) and b), e) a horrible cousin marriage of big picture metaphysics (dude, none of us are the cause of anything, it's all atoms and the void!) with our common sense moral intuitions about the sphere of human conduct? I pick E!
How is it mistaken to see the passing on of huge estates as inherently anti-egalitarian?
That last paragraph is a horrible cousin marriage of ridiculous slippery slope arguments. C'mon: if the best argument against the estate tax is that getting rid of it is tatamount to getting rid of human rights, then we're pretty deep into wingnuttery, no?
None of us deserve anything, we all have what we have by luck.
I don't believe anything like that. I think hard work and ability makes a difference; but not anything like all of the difference. Simply saying "we don't deserve it all" does not commit me to an absolutist position. Moreover, it's not the least bit clear that alienable rights like property and inanlienable rights like autonomy should be treated in the same fashion.
Further, I'm not committed to "deserve" or even "rights." I'm personally committed to "outcomes seem to be good" and "bye and large, we don't know what we're doing, so we ought to be careful with our social engineering." Everything else is more or less useful (or maybe better, useful placeholders for political arguments) toward that end. Given then the recent rending of our Constitution, it's going to be pretty hard to convince me that anyone who voted for Bush is peculiarly committed to "rights" either.
Well, the Constitution is also pretty solid on the idea of social compacts and the idea of a unified people/public.
As long as the unified res publica is giving the finger to the government, sure. But I wasn't arguing for a kind of originalism of taxation, but more of 'why does the estate tax bug people?' woolgathering.
I hate the concept of 'moral luck', but again, bad at ethics. I'm sure it makes sense if you're smart enough, but to me it seems to prove pretty much whatever you want to be proved.
2. Estate planning is the definition of uproductive activity. Anything that reduces it improves overall economic efficiency
This, I'm not so sure about. It leads to gifts to charities, at least, which I'm not so certain would come about absent the tax. Now, maybe charitable givings don't count as efficiency, but estate planning does lead to efficient charitable giving.
what do you mean by saving? Because the rich don't let their money sit around in bank or money market accounts, I don't think.
Cala,
I would keep the charitable deduction, but that's not, I think, what most estate-planning consists of. This stuff si deep necromancy.
Bphd,
1. The passing on of huge estates continues more or less uneffected by the estate tax. That's my contention. If you think this is *false*, fine. But then I would ask for examples of ten great fortunes reduced by the estate tax. I just don't think this ever happens.
2. No, I am not saying that the estate tax = human rights. Rather, that the (very common egalitarian) argument that redistribution is justified because we don't deserve what we have, because we don't deserve the conditions of our prosperity is a bad argument. But don't trust me. Just go to Crooked Timber, where Chris Betram is talking about a refinement (a correct on the merits, refinement, I should add) of this argument. It's been a tremendously influential argument. It's even in Rawls! But it's also a bad argument: it is a shotgun marriage of metaphysics and ethics. Hey, I favor redistribution! Just not this, particular, chickenshit argument for redistribution.
Tim,
Are we actually disagreeing about anything? Are you saying that Dwayne Wade deserves a foul call on every trip to the basket? What?
Okay, baa, can you name a form of redistribution that you support?
1: But then the closing loopholes argument makes more sense than the "people will just cheat anyway" argument, no?
2. It's not that "we don't deserve what we have." It's that, while we deserve what we have, we *also* deserve to be part of a functioning, healthy society. We deserve to be citizens, not just hoarders.
Anyway, dead people don'tn "have" anything. And I don't see how it's possible to argue, in a democracy, that *anyone* "deserves" to have wealth handed to them simply because of their birth.
98 -- How would you keep the charitable deduction if you scrapped the tax? I don't see how that can be done.
98: Fair enough point, except that I'm sure, incentives shining their light on the rich and poor alike, that having tax loopholes for charity probably increase the amount of funds allocated for charity (especially for the added benefit of Middle finger! Fuck you welfare state I donate my money to Preservation of Siamese Cats!)
And it is deep necromancy, but from the little I know of corporate tax accountancy, so's the whole tax code. Not a substantive point in favor of getting rid of the estate tax.
The word "deserve" doesn't mean anything. Nor does the word "earn". Let's not use them.
Redistribution is necessary because
A) The state needs money
B) Rich people are a good source of money because they won't miss it very much
C) Spending by the state should benefit poor people who are otherwise victimized by more powerful people and corporations
And it is deep necromancy, but from the little I know of corporate tax accountancy, so's the whole tax code. Not a substantive point in favor of getting rid of the estate tax.
Actually most estate tax planning is relatively simple conceptually, at least by tax standards. A very large part of it is just various sorts of valuation games.
And it's worth noting that there's a lot more to estate planning than taxes. Figuring out how you want your stuff to be divided up and how you can control as much as possible of your descendants' lives for as long as possible can get pretty complicated, too.
Are we actually disagreeing about anything?
Mmm, good question. Just not this, particular, chickenshit argument for redistribution, makes me think not. Depends how emotionally committed you are to a belief in natural law, I suppose. We're not disagreeing because I'm not requiring that the argument be extraordinarily strong before I'm willing to start taking stuff. We're not disagreeing because the fact that we have a progressive income tax hasn't pushed us in to the sea, and things seem to be working out, and that's more or less the reason for my general support--it works. We are disagreeing because I think it's a pretty good argument. My problem, in part, is that I don't know, in a mechanical sense, what "deserve" means. I don't know what the metric of dessert is. But people use the word, and I have a pretty good understanding of what they mean when they use the word, and that's all I really need. "Good enough for government work," as they say.
Aw heck. hilzoy promotes "liberty as opportunity" in opposition to "liberty as non-interference" as a justification for redistribution, unless I mischaracterized it miserably
Libertarians and Democrats, pt 3
Pt 1 said Republicans in practice were poor liberarians; pt 2 was about property as social construct rather than natural right.
Isn't one of the points of creating an incentive of estate planning the fact that such planning often involves setting aside money for nonprofits and storing it in investment trusts? Unproductive for the national treasury, but surely productive for the economy---especially the economy as more accurately defined to include the kinds of non-registered exchanges/creation of goods and services often undertaken by nonprofits. If Bill Gates' aversion to letting Uncle Sam handle his fortune played even a sliver of a role in his growing enthusiasm for fighting AIDS and Malaria, well, that seems like a phenomena worth encouraging.
Also, much as when we first had an estate tax to build our Navy to defend the young Republic against the smouldering Brits, we are kind of in dire need of revenue. I really don't get the double-sided "it's unfair!" vs. "they'll just get out of it anyway argument." If they'll get out of it, they'll get out of it--but if we don't have it then they get out of it for sure! But if they forget to do the estate planning, or don't feel like it, then yay! more spare change for needy Uncle Sam---and less likelihood that I'lls pend my old age paying down the debt and nothing else.
Okay, a quick quiz/poll, for those who care: who are you rooting for, US or Ghana? Explain.
The truly rich employ estate planning techniques to evade the tax. We aren't going to collect 40% of Larry Ellison's $15b
And this is pretty silly. We may not get the full 40% of Larry Ellison's 15b, but we'll get some of it -- the fact that there are techniques to avoid a tax does not mean that it becomes useless as a means of raising revenue.
108 -- Ghana of course. Like all of my left-wingy brethren, I hate the U.S.
Yes, what b and Becks said about "earned" money benefitting from the vast infrastructure set in place largely by government and community effort. Hard work should obviously be rewarded (and unfortunately it often isn't -- wealth in our society is our marker of status, but it's certainly not an accurate barometer of hard work vs. laziness).
Now, this can't be codified into tax law, but I think it's worth noting that wealth doesn't exist in a moral vacuum. At a certain point, wealth for its own sake becomes inherently immoral. Money, and the things that money can buy (I'm talking about health care, AIDS treatment, housing, food and so forth) is literally the difference between life and death for millions of people (millions of people in the US, even!). Taking care of yourself is fine; leaving money to take care of your children is fine (and should be taxable, obvs, for reasons elaborated on above), but what's not fine is when riches become just a number in a bank account, and the objective is to move up as high as you can on a certain list. This isn't the kind of wealth that any individual needs or is entitled to. (Is Simon Cowell really capable of "earning" that $30 million a year he receives from American Idol? Is anyone?)
I think it's vital to consider the moral baggage associated with wealth, especially if we begin from the understanding that no US fortune is truly "self-made" -- i.e. created without the benefit of infrastructure and state support at all levels. I don't know where this consideration would get us on the estate tax per se, but it would be a welcome addition to any public debate concerning taxation and redistribution and public vs. private goods.
Not that I think any argument remotely approaching this one will ever be introduced into our political system, at least not by one of our major parties.
Counting the posts on the Daily Kos forum,
They've all, come, to hate on Amer, ica...Michael I said, though I knew hi was sleeping,
"I'm empty and lonesome and I don't know why..."
Trying to heighten the contradictions,
We've, come, to hate on Amer, ica...
We've, come, to hate on Amer, ica...
Thanks Joe. Also hi s/b he.
The U.S. & Italy. Or maybe Ghana, if we need to root for owngoals.
Some people are arguing for changing the estate tax to an inheritance tax, in part because it would theoretically take the wind out of the sails of the "death tax" rhetoric.
Toss me a cigarette, I'll use it to burn a flag up.
We torched our last one at the WTO.
So I killed a womb baby, she read Z Magazine,
And recruited kids into the gay lifestyle.
Scansion is for fags.
Then how do you explain why apo is so bad at it?
I seem to remember the scansion in the original song not being rock-solid either.
Yeah, but a spoof should at least sync up with the original. Don't come around here with your soft bigotry of low expectations, Clown.
Not really on topic at all, but I finally read this article last night and it's pretty interesting.
U.S. But since we're losing to Ghana, and I can't be *too* upset about it, given that I'm amazed we made it past Italy, I've allowed PK to change the channel to Peep and the Big Wide World.
When I think back on all the time
I've spent at Unfogged
It's a wonder I'm employed at all.
But you know my lack of scansion prowess
Hasn't hurt me none.
I'll still punch Drymala in the balls.
I hope you'll forward us some photos with nice bright colors of said punching, apo.
"punch so-and-so in the balls" isn't idiomatic.
"Balls" doesn't rhyme with "all".
If you don't start behaving, apo, I'm going to take your kodachrome away!
But it was me and 'Postropher, down by the Mineshaft.
The rooms were musty
And the standpipes were old
All that winter we shared a cold
Said, me and 'Postropher, down by the Mineshaft.
I can call you Betty, and Betty, when you call me you can call me Al.
"Betty", not "Eddie"? I totally thought it was "Eddie". Man, so much for the homoerotic subtext.
While I'm here complaining about "You Can Call Me All", I'd like to announce that men are no longer permitted walk down the song-lyrical street for any reason.
A security guard at my building just remarked, in the elevator, "Of course we lost -- can't play sports anymore, we can't do anything but make money."
Whenever "You Can Call Me Al" plays, I sing along. There's no choice in the matter. One of the relatively few songs I can sing without hesitating a lot over the lyrics, too.
"is there something I am missing here?"
Yes. Democrats and Republicans have something in common: they are politicians. What they care about is power first, money second, and placating their base third. It is difficult for partisans to accept.