Zonkerbl wrote:Shoe wrote:stilldropin20 wrote:and the big daddy of them all is we must have tax laws that recapture all wealth upon death removing all the carve outs and loop holes. You can get as rich as you want while alive but upon death you can not keep passing it down because it rigs the game for the wealthy creating what is essentially a permanent ruling class not unlike royalty of europe.
Trump double'd the exemption for the estate tax.
Eliminating the estate tax is bad economics though. You want people planning for the future, and one incentive to plan for the future is to leave something behind for your kids. Take that away and you lower the time horizon nationwide, which makes it harder to avoid the "only cheat" outcome of infinitely repeated prisoner's games. In English it means you get more corruption, not less.
I think I would agree with you Zonk except that if you are wealthy and have good lawyers, you can shelter your assets. A study of the tax called it a voluntary tax, because you can avoid paying with the right legal advice (see carveouts for charitable giving).
In addition, their is a real negative effect on small business and family farms. Those same small businesses that we need to become big employers and those same farms that we don't want to become part of a mega farm.
