Text 3246, 137 rader
Skriven 2006-07-04 12:40:00 av Robert E Starr JR (3719.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
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@MSGID: <utdja21egen9fk1so10rulnhqk4mhc187v@4ax.com>
@REPLY: <e3346$44a6d214$18d64cf6$1941@KNOLOGY.NET>
On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 02:14:39 GMT, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In article <qblga2tja24504568956g83e1j82kuu34f@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> >> I'll take this as evidence that you have no substantive response, and
>> >> that you aren't familiar with the early history of the estate tax.
>> >   Of course I am. It was started in the early 1900s specifically as a 
>> >tax to stake a claim that some felt they society was owed because of the 
>> >"extra protections" that society allegedly gave to the wealthy.
>> 
>> >SOrta 
>> >ignoring the fact that they also paid more in taxes and also contributed 
>> >to society in other ways such as job creation, etc.
>> 
>> No, the estate tax addressed /inherited/ wealth. Those who inherit
>> wealth do not though the act of inheritance contribute to job
>> creation.
>
>    Many do, to the extent that they are able to keep the family 
>business going or they don't have to pay for insurance, estate planning 
>or loans to pay the  taxes. You seem think that inherited wealth just 
>magically appears and no one does anything else with it.  Even the trust 
>fund babies have to invest it somewhere where it is put to use in 
>growing the economy... even if it the entire thing is put into a 
>passbook.

Yeah, but the money would be invested wherever it went. If it went to
the government, for example, the government would borrow less or
reduce other taxes, meaning more available capital in the first case
and more money in the pockets of taxpayers in the second. That last
might be spent rather than invested, but if it wasn't and we needed
more investment, the tax code could be massaged to insure that it was,
e.g., by cutting the capital gains tax.

>> > It was also premised 
>> >on the idea that concentrations of wealth were antithetical to the US 
>> >democratic (small "d") aspirations. 
>> 
>> Right. And that differs from my original statement that "estate taxes
>> were introduced to avoid the creation of an American aristocracy" how?

>       I merely asked how that worked out. 
>
>> >     No, I asked WHY it should taken out of his control. You did not 
>> >even attempt to answer the question. You merely reiterated the part 
>> >about death. Why should the government take control of one's money 
>> >solely because they die and decide that they get their cut? 
>> 
>> Dude, he's dead: he no more needs his money than he needs his shoes or
>> his watch fob.

>    So, that gives the feds a right to come and take it away? It is 
>still his money and it was still taxed while he was alive and it should 
>still be his to give it away as he sees fit. 

Why not? The Feds had the right to take it away when he was alive. But
I think you'll find that under the law the money isn't being taken
away from the dead guy -- nature arranged that -- but rather from his
estate, which is the property of his heirs.

>> Hasn't it ever occurred to you that your fellow citizens are asked to
>> make any number of sacrifices for you for which they aren't monetarily
>> compensated? And that among these is the willingness of people who
>> don't even know you, typically young and from modest circumstances, to
>> fight and lay down their lives in your defense?

>   So somehow the estate taxes directly fund the military now? This is 
>an non-sequetor even above your high standards. 

You've missed my point. No man is an island. The notion that, on a
philosophical basis, we can claim that we owe nothing of what we earn
or inherit to our fellow citizens is a false one: We owe most of them
a debt and we depend on them. And it's a debt and a dependency that
isn't entirely reflected in the market economy, which hasn't yet been
extended so far as to compensate soldiers for the lives they lay down.

That's the superficial moral argument, and I think it's important and
influential: it's no accident, for example, that the heyday of British
egalitarianism followed the shared sacrifices of the second world war,
when the Queen famously said "Now I can look the people of the East
End in the eye."

Ultimately, though, it comes down to economics and evolution, to the
fact that we exist not just as individuals but as overlapping groups
of various sizes -- nuclear family, extended family, peer group, city,
county, state, nation, and so forth. Capitalism works well in large
modern nations because it allows for a high degree of specialization
and the efficient use of labor. Familial inheritance works because it
tends to maintain genes and memes that are useful in a certain area,
whether shoemaking or governance, but it is less versatile -- it lacks
fluidity.

So industrial societies have found it beneficial to deemphasize
heredity and instead emphasize the individual. This, indeed, is Adam
Smith's revolutionary contribution. I am merely supporting Smith by
advocating the shift from familial to personal incentive. But I am
doing so in a way that recognizes the remaining social importance of
the family unit and other, larger groups, and the importance of
generosity towards one's countrymen.
 
>> Even if one accepts the highly questionable premise that one man is
>> entitled to a larger slice of this earth and this air and the fruits
>> on the trees for something his grandfather did, one cannot take the
>> philosophy of greed so far as to deny one's debt to one's countrymen.

>        This is a reach...

Maybe, or maybe it's a restatement of what a great Republican, Teddy
Roosevelt, said when he proposed an inheritance tax in 1906, "The man
of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state." I think
that's also a reach, but it's an ancient one -- one that predates our
species -- and it is, I think, a socially important one.

-- 
Josh

"I love it when I'm around the country club, and I hear people talking about
the debilitating
effects of a welfare society. At the same time, they leave their kids a
lifetime and beyond
of food stamps. Instead of having a welfare officer, they have a trust officer.
And instead
of food stamps, they have stocks and bonds."

- Warren Buffett
                                                                   
--- SBBSecho 2.11-Win32
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