If there's one thing that modern politics has illuminated it is the fact that extremists like to hide in the shadows until the coast is clear and then implement their deepest fantasies as if it should be a self-evident life truth. The most recent example can be found in an enlightening MoveOn article titled Top 5 Problems With The Tax Deal.
(Cue scary music)
Since the age of Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the left has done its best to paint the idea of a Communist threat to the West as laughable and paranoid. McCarthy has become the boogeyman thrown up any time a center, right-of-center or far-right citizen has suggested that certain leftist policies sit in the ranks of Socialist or Communist ideology.
Now, I'm not one to jump around labelling leftists as Commies. In fact, I don't think I've ever accused the far left of secretly being Communists. But the aforementioned MoveOn article really goes to show how far the left has gone in its unabashed audacity to propel extremist ideology. Clearly, the intent on the part of this organization, founded by a leftist-loved billionaire who purposefully destroyed the livelihood of countless working class Britains, is to demonize the wealthy and exalt the perceived suffering and/or inequality of the working class.
(Yeah... the irony is hilarious.)
This attitude alone would be enough to confirm that there certainly is a tinge of Communism to the modern far left. But there is one thing that the far left (and increasingly the supposedly moderate left) has fought for that does more than anything else to reveal Communist ideology. And that thing is the Estate Tax otherwise known as the "Death Tax". There can be no clearer modern example that the left believes the state should own everything than this.
I think it's fair to say that most rational people believe business owners who pay:
- income tax
- sales tax
- property tax
- corporate tax
- payroll tax
- wealth tax
- capital gains tax
...and the myriad other taxes out there over the course of their lives in creating, building and developing something of worth -- such a business -- have already paid their fair share of taxes to acquire that which is rightfully theirs. It was their ingenuity that resulted in the formation of a successful business. The resultant property is theirs. They've contributed to the well-being of others by creating opportunities for those people to earn a living. They worked hard to attain success and they should have every right to leave the fruits of their labour to whomever they choose.
The far left? Ehhhh... not so much.
As much as they try and deny it -- while simultaneously opposing broad-based tax cuts or creating carbon taxes on innovative, industrialized nations -- the far left firmly believes in wealth-redistribution. It's undeniable now. It is their clear and firm belief that those who achieve success in their lives don't really deserve it. No, the people who deserve it are the so-called under-privileged.
(And whether under-privileged by circumstance or by choice, the left really doesn't care because everybody's a victim anyhow.)
The Estate Tax is the clearest piece of evidence demonstrating that the far-left believes the fruits of success belong to the state and that the state can claim ownership over whatever it wants. In fact, the folks over at MoveOn.org have gone so far as to call the government not taking a percentage of the estate of the deceased a "millionaire's bailout".
Think about that for a second. In the eyes of the left, the government not taking your property is equal to the government bailing you out!
Communists believe that the government -- a.k.a. the people -- have rightful ownership and sole determination for the distribution of all property. You don't own a thing; everything belongs to the state. It can only be from that mentality that a person could delude themselves enough to perceive the action of letting your heirs keep that which you have built translate into the government giving these things to your heirs. It's absolutely mind-blowing!
When you combine this with the fact that liberals aren't as generous as tippers or that studies show conservatives to be substantially more charitable than liberals, the hypocrisy is rather appalling. The gimme-gimme attitude of the modern left is just another thing that confirms my belief that conservative attitudes towards economic and financial issues are far more logical -- and ethical -- than anything the left has going for it these days.
They don't have it in themselves to give selflessly when they see somebody in need. They'd rather the government take things on their behalf and redistribute it with them taking the credit in being "progressive" and "caring".
As I said, I'm not one to go around calling leftists Communists. But with open calls for an Estate tax that usurps 55% (read: more than half / the majority share) of those possessions which you would give your spouse, children, friends or whomever you choose, I have a much harder time not seeing a strong Communist element to the modern left.
It's because of this that I believe "Death Tax" isn't quite descriptive enough and there's a much more appropriate name for the Estate tax: the Communism Tax.
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12 comments:
"If there's one thing that modern politics has illuminated it is the fact that extremists like to hide in the shadows until the coast is clear and then implement their deepest fantasies as if it should be a self-evident life truth. The most recent example can be found in an enlightening MoveOn article titled Top 5 Problems With The Tax Deal."
Yup. Those "extremists" like tho "hide" by posting their ideas on public internet sites where they proclaim who they are and what their ideas are...
[BTW, "scary music" link is AWESOME/HILARIOUS. I love it.]
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"Since the age of Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the left has done its best to paint the idea of a Communist threat to the West as laughable and paranoid."
I think that McCarthy is not brought up as a joke. He wasn't a joke. And as much as he may be used in jokes, or as much as he may be the butt (or but?) of jokes, he's not funny. He's certainly not a joke to the many people who were blacklisted. Dangerous people. Like Pete Seeger or Dorothy Parker... and many others...
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I'm not seeing the extremist/communistist stuff in the Moveon article you point to...
I'm in favour of an estate tax. As long as the inheritance is taxed (in a progressive-taxation-way) at the recipient's end, not the dead guy's end. I tend to think that there are many ways to tax people, which are used to different extents in different times and places, and that I'd rather be taxed after I die than before I die... [though again, I said I was in favour of a progressive tax rate and taxing the recipient, not the dead giver].
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"It's because of this that I believe "Death Tax" isn't quite descriptive enough and there's a much more appropriate name for the Estate tax: the Communism Tax."
I could say a lot more... but I'm always in danger of saying too much more... so I'm wondering now what your definition of communism is... What is it exactly? (I know it probably seems self evident... but trust me... it's not... especially for self-proclaimed communists (probably)).
I'll quote Dictionary.com for the definition of Communism:
"- a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state."
I think I've outlined it fairly clearly. When people live and work, their activities are taxed. Whatever they buy, earn or develop that has already been taxed is theirs outrightly. Nobody else owns it and said person has the right to do with it as he/she pleases.
When that person dies, ownership is transferred to those parties of the owner's choosing. After all, the only party who clearly has a right to said properties is the person who bought, earned or developed those properties.
An Estate tax allows the government to take that which is not theirs; the property has already been taxed. An Estate tax places control over the distribution of property into the hands of the state.
Especially in the case of what the Democrats in the US and their supporters (read the MoveOn.Org article) they want a 55% tax on people's property to be distributed for the collective of the state. That is the majority share of the property.
I'm not sure where you're not seeing the state/community as having collective ownership over property.
(BTW: I didn't say McCarthy was a joke. Please re-read that paragraph if you're unsure what I said.)
Great post but no one but the “useful idiot” leftards believe that it’s about helping the “Poor Poor People”. It’s an obvious pretext and is nothing more than their sales pitch. The fact is, they could care less. If they did care, they’d speak out in support of free enterprise.
Leftard-ism is best described as a cult. It wants a society where adherence to the cult’s ideology is the deciding factor on everyone’s place in society. They can’t tolerate a society where ones merit makes that decision. That’s because such a society would leave these do-nothings and no-gooders in the dust.
It’s no coincidence that the Leftard strongholds are the unions, bureaucracies and universities. The more power these crooks get, the poorer all of society becomes, and that’s especially true for the “Poor Poor People”
"They can’t tolerate a society where ones merit makes that decision"
Yes. Because nothing says "merit" like a multimillion dollar inheritance.
If I inherit a million dollars, that's not about my merit.
You are right that you did not say that McCarthy was a joke. You were saying that people (perhaps like myself?) bring up McCarthy to say that the communist threat was a joke. I apologize for the conflation. Though I would also acknowledge that Stalin, for instance, was also not a joke, someone to be feared. But I digress.
I'll accept your definition of communism. Or dictionary.com's definition. But I don't think it applies here.
You say "...the Democrats in the US and their supporters (read the MoveOn.Org article) they want a 55% tax on people's property to be distributed for the collective of the state. That is the majority share of the property."
First, this is all about a deal that the democrats (or at least Obama) have accepted.
Second--and this is not the deal... the deal would mean even lower taxes--a 55% tax on people's property (and here I can only infer that you mean ALL people's property, especially as per the definition of communism above) is not communism. It's a 55% tax that applies to someone's property after they die. That's hardly "the holding of all property in common". "All" would be 100%. And it would apply in general, at all times, to all people who are alive.
A 55% tax on inheritance is a tax. Just like any other. Applied to money as it moves from one person to another--just like the GST, which applies when money moves from seller to buyer; or just like income tax, which applies to money moving from employer to employee... (By the way... I'm against income taxes on principle... but I digress...)
Moreover, a "55% tax on people's property" is not what the moveon.org people are talking about in that article. The part you refer to (I think) is:
"In addition to extending all the Bush income tax breaks for the top 2%, the deal will slash the estate tax. If Congress did nothing, next year the estate tax would be 55% and apply to everyone inheriting $1 million or more. But the deal reduces it to 35% and only people who inherit more than $5 million will have to pay. This second bailout will give a gigantic tax giveaway to a few thousand of the richest families in the country and add hundreds of billions to the national debt."
I take issue with the term "bailout". It seems inappropriate/incorrect. But I digress.
As you can see (read?) the 55% tax would apply to "everyone inheriting $1 million or more". Only a small percentage of property owners in the USA bequeath over 1 million. But even there, the moveon.org article is not entirely correct. It applies to those making 1 million or more, yes... but it applies to the money inherited that's OVER AND ABOVE 1 million dollars.
This is like the regular progressive income tax system we have come to know and love/hate. So--and I know I'm probably simplifying here, given how complicated the financial world is-- someone getting a 900 000 inheritance would pay no tax. Someone getting a 1 000 001 inheritance would pay 55% on only 1 dollar. So 55 cents total. Not exactly Marx's wet dream...
Not exactly Marx's wet dream... but a huge first step in that direction.
It's kind of funny that you bring the GST into the equation. The estate tax doesn't really fit into the buy/sell or income/pay equation of the tax system. However it does fit one aspect of the GST: it is a tax upon a tax. The GST comes in on top of provincial sales tax so that if a person pays $10 for something and the provincial tax is 8%, the GST applies to $10.80 not the original $10.
The estate tax is the government taxing that which they have already taxed. You justify it because it is over and above a certain amount and feel that whoever inherits that money doesn't deserve it.
Yet you haven't justified why the state deserves to tax that which is not their property, is not being sold, is not being paid in salary as income, is not being excised and has already paid a capital gains tax upon.
Especially when applied to inheritance of a business, the capital gains tax is the most important aspect of this equation because everything that accounts for estate itself has already been taxed. Thus, an estate tax is truly a tax upon a tax.
But obviously this is about the perceived "fairness" (ha-ha) of a "progressive" (ha-ha) tax system. And the success of the progressive tax system (which never seems to go anywhere but up) has never been proven as an effective means of changing the conditions of the low income earners. But I digress.
The whole point is that the only clear owner in this equation is the person who earned and/or bought whatever property the estate accounts for. It has already been taxed. For a person to die and have the state swoop in like vultures to carrion to pick the bones of the dead is morally reprehensible because the state has no right to decide ownership.
And when it comes to business ownership, the estate tax practically guarantees that if a person builds up a moderately successful business, when they die their heirs will never retain ownership of that business. Let's look at a business that has a evaluated worth of $3 million. That's not much in terms of a business value. That would be a moderately successful McDonald's earning it's owner a paycheque of less than six figures per year.
Upon that business owner's death, if the business were passed on to the person's family, under a 55% estate tax they would own the government $1.1 million. Now, there would be no way the family has access to $1.1 million except through selling the business off. Thus, your estate tax has just guaranteed that the family will never be able to retain the business.
Oh, happy day on your family member's death! What a morally righteous thing the estate tax is.
The state does not own that property. It has already been taxed for all areas of sale, income and development. You still have not addressed that huge moral question because it can't be addressed.
"And the success of the progressive tax system (which never seems to go anywhere but up) has never been proven as an effective means of changing the conditions of the low income earners."
This statement--or at least half of it--is demonstrably untrue. The progressive tax system over the last few years (including those years in Canada under liberal government during the 1990s and early 2000s) the income tax rates have gone down. (Though after Stephen Harper's first budget, my income taxes went up in absolute dollar terms. Not by much. But they did go up. This happened because I was in the lowest tax bracket. It went from 15% to 15.25%. Rates in the brackets far above me came down). Effects on the poor and working poor probably have more to do with how the money is spent.
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I've tried looking into how the American Estate tax works... and (like almost everything involving the IRS)... it's terribly complicated. I've lived and worked in both the USA and Canada, and I've found American bureaucracy (private and public) to be far more complex. (Perhaps that's because I grew up in Canada, and am used to our way of doing things. Perhaps not).
I would like to know if there are any examples of the 3 million dollar business not being able to be passed to heirs. Inheritance taxes have been higher in the recent past (under Clinton, Reagan, etc). Marginal income tax rates were far higher under Eisenhower than they are now. And despite many Republican Ads about family farms being lost due to the "Death Tax"... I have heard that no one can point to any actual examples of a family farm or small business being lost due to the inheritance tax.
I've tried to find sources to back up this claim. There are a lot out there, but nothing as concise as I'd like. One example is here:
I assume you'd dismiss mediamatters.org as a source. But they do cite other more reputable sources like the Congressional Budget Office (e.g., http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/65xx/doc6512/07-06-EstateTax.pdf)
"The estate tax doesn't really fit into the buy/sell or income/pay equation of the tax system."
It's a tax on a transfer of wealth. Wealth is transfered when something is bought/sold or payed as income to someone. But wealth is sometimes regularly taxed without any transfer, e.g., property taxes.
The GST as you describe it is a tax on a tax: PST adds 80 cents to a 10 dollar purchase; GST is applied to 10.80... so the GST would be applied not only to the 10 dollar good or service, but also the 80 cents...
But that's not what's happening with the estate tax. It's not a tax on a portion of money that is itself tax. It's a tax on a chunk of money, after said chunk of money has been previously taxed. That happens all the time. I pay a sales tax with money I earned on the labor market, part of which was taken away with an income tax. But that's not a tax on a tax. It's not a tax applied to an amount of money that has been (or is in the process of being) taken away as a tax.
BTW, I'm not certain that that's how the GST worked in Ontario. Somewhere in my apartment, I surely have a pre-HST receipt to verify this around here somewhere... but it might take days of searching to find one. It's a moot point now anyway, now that the GST and PST have been "harmonized".
As for justifying the inheritance tax by saying that it's not deserved... I'm not sure it's necessary to justify an inheritance tax in that way. Inheritance is a transfer of wealth. The government can tax such transfers. (The 16th amendment to the US constitution says that the government can tax anything). And... when it comes to inheritances... it's not really about "desert" (i.e., worthiness, entitlement). If I inherit money, it's not because I deserve it. It's because I had rich parents (or whoever). Arguably, I deserve the money I make working long hard hours at my job... but even that is taxed, without anyone mustering the same level of outrage that is reserved for the estate tax.
I said earlier that I was in principle against the income tax. Without it, saving and investing would be easier. And I think consumption taxes are more fair in general. In a sense, a consumption tax taxes people based on what they take from society, rather than what they contribute to it (through their labour... as doctors, janitors, whatever). But I digress.
The government, in order to carry out its responsibilities, needs money. It has various ways to gather the necessary money. Taxation is one of those methods. What are the government's responsibilities? That's something that should probably be decided in some liberal/democratic way...
"...the state has no right to decide ownership."
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but... it does. That's part of what a state is. There is no property without the state. Property exists because the state is there to say it exists, and to defined individuals' claims to their property against other individuals. There is no money without the state. Money is great. We need a store of value and a medium of exchange to make the world go around (that's not the most lyrical way to say it). We need a state to administer such a system. Imagine if I printed my own "Anon1152bucks" and tried to pay various debts that way. (Though perhaps I should try something like that. It has apparently worked before).
Uh, let's start with your last ridiculous statement.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are completely, absolutely, 100% dead wrong that there is no property without the state. The sky exists without humans defining it and rights exist without the state defining them or even states existing.
There are state property rights and private property rights. If property existed because of the state, it could not be private. That would be the system that we call Communism.
Hmm... I wonder where we might have been talking about that recently? The fact that you cannot see that difference helps me understand why you don't understand the estate tax equation and how it crosses private property lines.
As for your comment about money, money is nothing but a means of exchange, a barter placeholder. The fact that government prints currency (there's a difference between money and currency) is simply because the citizens of that country have deemed it most effective for their government to do so on their behalf.
Would money exist without the state or government? As sure as any other means of bartering, yes. You could print your own form of currency and use it with any person who deemed it. In fact, it's been done before:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/print-your-own-money-build-community.php
As for your assertion that governments can tax anything they want, absolutely. They could tax your right to urinate a la the big bad corporation in Urinetown. But whether government can do something in no way justifies whether they should do something. Look at the death penalty and tell me that governments have the right to execute their citizens because they can.
In regards to your own personal experience in upper tax brackets getting a cut while you got a minor increase, so what? I thought you just said that governments have a right to tax whatever they see fit.
But, as an aside, your example does nothing to illustrate the effectiveness of progressive tax systems. Even if you did get a tax increase, it still doesn't come close to the percentage upper income earners pay. Until the tax is equal, you're still benefiting from a progressive tax system.
Either way, you said that it was demonstrably untrue without... well... demonstrating it.
As for your inability to find examples, you're hilarious. It must have taken you a long time skipping the endless sites that give specific examples. Did you think I wasn't going to call your bluff?
Let's start with a story you may have heard of (that being the horse Secretariat) and work our way down:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-28/democrats-estate-tax-plan-trips-next-secretariat-amity-shlaes.html
http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/commentary/28-commentary/6103-farmer-stories-reveal-estate-tax-impact
http://realdebatewisconsin.blogspot.com/2008/02/estate-tax-horror-stories.html
http://www.enotalone.com/article/6812.html
But if you want an idea why the estate tax is no good, just look at what really happens in the destruction of business, jobs AND tax dollars! :
http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/08/the-death-tax-is-killing-family-businesses/
“A study by Prof. Antony Davies of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh found that for every 4.5 percent increase in the estate tax (the average annual increase since 1993), 6,000 small firms are liquidated or absorbed by larger firms."
"Conversely, Davies found that repealing the estate tax would create 100,000 new businesses, which would employ 2 million people, generate $80 billion in labor income, and increase payroll tax revenues by more than $20 billion annually."
"When small businesses get gobbled up, local production is often cut off and jobs are outsourced or sent to the chopping block. Former Congressional Budget Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin predicts that reinstating the death tax at a 55 percent rate will cost the economy nearly 1.4 million small business jobs.”
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