Wednesday, December 15, 2010

IS THE ESTATE TAX REALLY AN ATTACK ON SUCCESS?

The New York Times is at it again. They published an editorial titled "Give Up On The Estate Tax" written by Ray Madoff. I thought it was worthy of funny commentary, critical review, etc. It starts off with the words congressional democrats but there are no names mentioned. Ms. Madoff then offers the brilliant insight to drop the estate tax and then just tax it as income to the recipient.

Ms. Madoff quotes Justice Brandeis as saying concentrated wealth and democracy can't go hand in hand. I believe there is no such thing as concentration of wealth. For the third time in my blogs I repeat that wealth is either spent or invested, it goes round and round in the system. The only problem with this country is that there isn't enough wealth. Think about that and analyze it.

She makes the statement that our greater dispersal of wealth was responsible for a strong middle class with absolutely no backup for that claim. It just doesn't matter how much wealth anyone owns, as long as they keep it flowing through the economy. Asking the question, what level of taxes is appropriate for heirs is like asking the question how much is a professor at Boston College Law School worth? (Ray D. Mafoff is a professor at Boston College Law School). There is a heck of alot of lawyers in this country. Maybe there are too many people being taught law and not enough people being taught how to make things. Why do people like Ms. Madoff talk about nothing but tax, tax, tax?

Here's a new idea. How about imposing an education tax. For example, someone like Ms. Madoff has all this education, that means she has an advantage over other people. Therefore, for every upgrade you get in education, your tax rate should go up, despite your income level. We can call it the "EDUCATION TAX" which can serve to even the playing field.

How about the person who spends all their money and has no estate and the other saves all their money and has an estate - get the point? The estate tax is no significant percentage of total government tax receipts. What motivates so many people to be so concerned about collecting that money? A lot of people write a lot of things about what should happen to other people's money. From my experience, most of these people aren't too charitable.

By the way, I decided to watch Michael Moore's film on Capitalism. It's just plain wrong throughout almost it's entire length and is out of context to what really has happened to this country.

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