…about NATO countries not paying their share, I wish Hillary had responded with something like, “So tell us again why you don’t think you should pay your fair share.”
johntmaysays
In “Blue” Massachusetts? Why don’t we have a progressive state tax code in “Blue” Massachusetts?
jconwaysays
No matter where I end up working, I will be devoting my entire volunteer energy to that effort and hope to enlist my wife in her first canvass for that one too! Hope to see you on the hustings-that one will be a once in a generation opportunity to fix the state. It’s really a policy silver bullet and one that can bypass Baker and DeLeo.
Christophersays
…I believe that applies to personal income, but not sure about corporations.
fredrichlaricciasays
and after Hillary smoked him last night he’s a LOOOOOOOOOSA !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
jconwaysays
She clearly won that, and I think he made a lot of gaffes in that section which will make for great campaign ads. Hillary discussing her dads small business is incredibly relevant, and should make for a positive as as well. The contrasts between the hard working Rodhams and the red lining, tax eating be tax dodging Trumps can’t be overstated this election. It’s critical.
fredrichlaricciasays
I like that jconway. It has a certain ring of TRUTH about it. I can see a TV ad.:)
Taxes fight fires, build roads, educate our children & make sure seniors have a secure & healthy retirement. When Republicans talk about legalizing immigrants, they constantly mention paying any back taxes because even they know it’s a key part of being a citizen. But the 1% like Trump brag about how they have loopholes written into the tax code so they don’t have to pay their fair share.
petrsays
But the 1% like Trump brag about how they have loopholes written into the tax code so they don’t have to pay their fair share.
… that Donald Trump is amongst the 1%. I think Secretary Clinton was asking the right question: is he really worth what he says he is? As can be seen with the hair, the reality often takes a backseat to the appearance: and that to a singularly absurd degree; and, so, long thin strands of a few very carefully cultivated pieces sweeps over a much larger, entirely bare (that is to say bald), patch. So it is with the hair. Who’s to say it’s not also true for the accountancy? Certainly, anybody who’d go out in public with hair like that isn’t going to scruple to keep his books straight behind closed doors.
In fact, I think it’s possible he pays nothing in taxes because the unravelling of the great shell game that is his various companies and entanglements would show his overall income to be very close to zero: a manner of ponzi scheme whereby he’s constructed a tight and complicated web of loans and leveraged assets kept aloft by the very tension between competing creditors; a rolling juggling act of moving from sector to sector; real estate; casinos; airlines; steak; tv; where he picks up a different type of ball to throw in the air to avoid anyone seeing that he dropped the previous…
A calculating legerdemaine in which he continually succeeds in covering a very lot of nothing with a very little something might, in fact, be the very genesis of his inflated belief in his own smarts.
fredrichlaricciasays
who has been sucking off the public teat since he was born on third base and acts like he hit a triple.
Last night the sniveling, eye-rolling, dry-mouthed water sipping, bombastic bully interrupter was called out and exposed for the fraud he is for the whole world to see.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
scott12masssays
One problem is Trump probably didn’t cheat on his taxes, he’s been audited often and would have been caught by now if he had. He has groups of accountants who worm their way about the tax laws and find loopholes. But the Donald didn’t write those laws, he’s merely using the loopholes put in the laws by congressmen (both sides of the aisle) who were doing favors for their own special interests that they were trying to protect.
Simplify the tax code but who’s talking about that?
centralmassdadsays
Washington Post has been doing some really good reporting on this, and it sure looks like Trump’s businesses directed business debtors to satisfy business debts by making donations to the Trump Foundation, which could mean that the Trump business did not report the income.
Also, it looks like Trump has used the foundation to fund litigation settlements for his businesses.
The tax code is a complex beast, to be sure. Five years ago, it was a slightly less complex beast. Five years before that, less complex still. The question is: did the added complexity close more loopholes than it opened, or vice versa?
The idea that a simpler tax code has fewer loopholes is lazy. It might be true, it might not be — it depends an awful lot on the actual implementation. Many of the complexities of the code are designed to eliminate (last year’s) loopholes…
Christophersays
…all those tax loopholes weren’t written into law by poor people!
merrimackguysays
That reform eliminated a lot of things like tax shelters and reduced deductions.
But you’re right in saying that it gets more complicated each year. I think that’s because people dream up new things to do with money (or discover new ways around the current laws), and the law needs to keep up.
I pay over $50,000 in Federal Taxes alone. I wonder what people think “paying your fair share” should be.
pogosays
…for paying that much in Fed taxes…
SomervilleTomsays
Unless you’re showing an AGI in excess of something like a million dollars (assuming you file jointly), then I don’t include you in the people that I think do not pay their fair share (others may feel differently). Based on what we heard in the debate, I think Mr. Trump is not paying his fair share.
I think your comment demonstrates what Ms. Clinton is saying: most of us have federal tax obligations, and most of us pay them. Mr. Trump was not in that category during the years cited by Ms. Clinton.
Some of us (not you and not me) should pay far more. It appears that Mr. Trump is one of those who, at least in the years cited by Ms. Clinton, paid no federal taxes at all. I’m pretty sure I owed and paid federal taxes those years, and I make the perhaps rash assumption that you did as well.
Do you think that Donald Trump was living in poverty during those two years?
merrimackguysays
I once saw Ted Turner say he’d paid no Federal taxes, but that was because of the size of his charitable contributions. I doubt that’s Trump’s reason.
Trump aside (but Wells Fargo in focus) I think that current laws around corporate governance produce significant issues around compensation.
I’m not sure of the answer (and it’s not really a topic that most people can discuss), but the problem is diffuse ownership (think mutual funds) electing an unaccountable board which determines pay for management, and somehow they think $200 million parachutes and $50 million/yr in pay is okay.
There’s not much the regular guy can do about it. Withdraw from your 401K?
SomervilleTomsays
My view is that the purpose of government is to do things that the people cannot do for themselves.
I agree with you that there’s not much the regular guy can do about it. I think that’s why we so urgently need strong and effective federal policy that addresses it.
merrimackguysays
In theory there are controls- stockholder votes. In practice, where Fidelity, holding all that stock in funds, votes with management 100% of the time, it’s not working.
I would be all in favor of changes to laws governing securities, but where we have such a totally effed up system already, with many on all sides having a vested interested in the status quo, I am not confident we’ll see change.
SomervilleTomsays
I certainly share your lack of confidence that we’ll see change.
Still, it seems to me that our only prayer is to continue to aggressively improve our tax code. I agree with stomv that “improve” is most certainly not the same as “simplify”.
Still, I think we must redouble our efforts to correct the current situation, where people like Donald Trump pay no taxes while people like you and me pay tax bills of five and nearly six figures.
And lists Hillary’s sensible estate tax increase as the primary reason he is voting for Trump, along with a lot of other drivel. Scott Adams used to be cool man…
johntmaysays
Is central to America’s belief that all men are created equal, that there ought not be a noble class. Without the estate tax, as Piketty points out, any culture quickly divides into two classes, one ultra rich & in control and the other poor and hopeless.
Hell, even Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were in favor of the Estate Tax.
Christophersays
I think the reason so many non-rich are talked into opposing the estate taxes is that deep down they think because we are created equal and can achieve great success, that one day such a tax will apply to them.
petrsays
I think the reason so many non-rich are talked into opposing the estate taxes is that deep down they think because we are created equal and can achieve great success, that one day such a tax will apply to them.
…vague fantasies of a future self someday, somehow, leaving a heap o coin to offspring hardly “cuts” with the same vigor, depth and strength — if it “cuts” at all — as the very real creation of socio-economic tiers, which will no doubt in time concretize into classes and from there have oppression metastasize on. Oh, you’re not wrong, and maybe many people do think like that, but that’s an irrational response and hardly to be set agains (‘cuts both ways’) the rationalist approach of Piketty, Jefferson and Franklin.
SomervilleTomsays
The GOP rank-and-file certainly respond to deceptive monikers like “death tax”. The media do a terrible job of reminding all of us just how few people actually pay those gift and estate taxes. Nor do the media effectively communicate just how dramatically those gift and estate taxes have been cut since the Reagan years.
It certainly is an irrational response for a working-class man or woman to oppose restoring the gift and estate tax to its level during the “glory days” of the US economy — 70-75% (see graph below). It is no accident that the period when our working and middle class was strongest coincides with the period that our gift and estate taxes were at their maximum.
Those who want to restore a sense of prosperity to the working- and middle-class should be supporting the restoration of the gift and estate tax to its historic highs.
Our most immediate economic issue is wealth (as opposed to income) concentration. The gift and estate tax is one of the most effective ways this wealth concentration was controlled until the Reagan years.
A key challenge in accomplishing that is to cut through the “death tax” rhetoric of the 1% and show working-class men and women who pays the gift and estate tax and why.
The creation of socio-economic tiers is a very real and significant part of establishing a “noble” class, and the absence of a generational transfer tax greatly accelerates the creation of those tiers.
scott12masssays
A friend (in his 80’s) owns hundreds of acres out here in the sticks, some he inherited from his parents (they’ve been in the area from the early 1800’s) and some he bought over the years himself. For years they paid taxes, logged the land, built houses for new generations and enjoyed the solitude. As time passed civilization has started to encroach, we have some development out here now and he was recently offered over a million for just one of his parcels. His “holdings” are now worth many millions but what he wants to pass down is the ability to go out for a walk, go hunt, create their own space (he gives his kids, grandkids some acreage so they can build their own places).
Why does society get to take the value that has been built up, through hard work, over the years and spread that wealth with others who weren’t as far-sighted as my friends family?
SomervilleTomsays
If your neighbor truly wants to pass down “the ability to go out for a walk [or] go hunt”, many options exist for ways to accomplish that (such as the creation of a rural land trust) that avoid the gift and estate tax.
If your neighbor insists on preserving the ability to subdivide, sell, or otherwise financially benefit from the land, then the gift and estate tax is the price he or she pays to society for doing that. Society “gets to take” that wealth so that those hundreds of acres of land don’t become the estate of Lady Whatshername — walled, gated, fenced, and inaccessible to anyone but descendants and their guests.
Realistically speaking, the descendants of that property owner in the situation you describe find a way to sell off a portion of those hundreds of acres and pay whatever gift or estate taxes are due. It’s not an onerous burden, and serves a very real societal purpose.
petrsays
Why does society get to take the value that has been built up, through hard work, over the years and spread that wealth with others who weren’t as far-sighted as my friends family?
… in the early 1800’s, life expectancy was less than a third of life expectancy now (your friend would likely not have made it to his 80’s) and this exactly and precisely because of the many things your government does. The very fact he’s had 80 years to spend on it is because of the governments protections, including the protection of the property from unscrupulous people who, absent the law, would have marched a small army of armed men in to take the land by force any time between now and then… assuming, of course, that absent a government some other country would not have invaded and marched a large army in. And, absent all the things the government does the property would not be worth as much to developers who would now wish to pay millions to own it and subsume into what you term ‘encroaching civilization.’
I doubt very much your friend, in all his 80 years had to do much other than enjoy the property and any work he did to it was solely for the sake of his own pleasure, whatever that might be. Absent a government he would have to protect it also. He may have had to build some sort of fortification and hire people to watch over it. He would have had to fight whatever fires happened there on his own. He would have had to clear out predator animals on his own and cull whatever feed animals periodically. All these things government does without, it must be said, making any judgements upon his use of the land. All he had to do was to enjoy it.
Wholly aside from all this, that is to say the fact that you answered your own question twice with the descriptive terms ‘encroaching civilization’ and ‘society’, your friend, actually, doesn’t seem far-sighted at all. It seems like he wants things, as they are now, to always stay as they are now. That’s, in point of fact, the very opposite of ‘far sighted.’ If he was, in fact, ‘investing’ he’d sell the property to the highest bidder. Changing it to suit his own pleasures is not investing and not selling is not investing.
Society does not owe your friend a separate legacy. Society ought to be your friends legacy.
scott12masssays
Thank god he had the 2nd amendment (and a dozen siblings) to help him fight off the bands of “unscrupulous people” and wild grizzlies when he settled the wild west. He and his family have been paying taxes all these years.
So when Barack sets aside national park land he’s not “investing in the future”?
johntmaysays
that it’s wrong to give welfare to the unemployed because they have not worked for it?
johntmaysays
Iowa farmer, harvesting corn on his 2,000 acre farm, comes across a clearing where a native American has a tepee, some hides he’s collected, his family and a horse. The farmer says “Get of my land!” The native American replies “What makes it your land?” The farmer replies “I got is from my daddy who got it from his daddy who oi from his daddy. It’s been passed down for four generations!” And the native American asks, “And where did your great great grandfather get it from?” The farmer replies “He fought the Indians for it!”
The native American rolls up his sleeves, puts up his fists and says “Okay, let’s go”
And then there is this from Benjamin Franklin:
“All property except that needed by individuals for survival “is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.”
scott12masssays
There are no “Native” americans. There are some descendants of the pre-historic first explorers of North America who came over the Bering Straits. Unfortunately for them they established a nomadic lifestyle and whenever nomads have bumped up against “settlers” they usually lose, just ask the bedouins, mongols, roma etc.
Let me know what is the limit for “property needed by individuals”? I don’t have a lot but I pay my taxes on it. (Fla taxes are cheaper than Mass). I’ll let the Kennedys and Bushes know if they’ve exceeded their limits with their “compounds” but they would probably qualify for special consideration wouldn’t they.
johntmaysays
We’re all from descendants from Lucy, eh? You want me to tell you that the limits for property are? Well, that’s not how it works. We, the people, make that decision collectively. We have varying opinions and we come to a compromise. That’s a little “democracy’ tied into this republic.
But since you asked, I think that anything over an inheritance of $500,000 is “too much” and needs to be spread around. There’s a lot of us out there with nothing.
…about NATO countries not paying their share, I wish Hillary had responded with something like, “So tell us again why you don’t think you should pay your fair share.”
In “Blue” Massachusetts? Why don’t we have a progressive state tax code in “Blue” Massachusetts?
No matter where I end up working, I will be devoting my entire volunteer energy to that effort and hope to enlist my wife in her first canvass for that one too! Hope to see you on the hustings-that one will be a once in a generation opportunity to fix the state. It’s really a policy silver bullet and one that can bypass Baker and DeLeo.
…I believe that applies to personal income, but not sure about corporations.
and after Hillary smoked him last night he’s a LOOOOOOOOOSA !
Fred Rich LaRiccia
She clearly won that, and I think he made a lot of gaffes in that section which will make for great campaign ads. Hillary discussing her dads small business is incredibly relevant, and should make for a positive as as well. The contrasts between the hard working Rodhams and the red lining, tax eating be tax dodging Trumps can’t be overstated this election. It’s critical.
I like that jconway. It has a certain ring of TRUTH about it. I can see a TV ad.:)
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Taxes fight fires, build roads, educate our children & make sure seniors have a secure & healthy retirement. When Republicans talk about legalizing immigrants, they constantly mention paying any back taxes because even they know it’s a key part of being a citizen. But the 1% like Trump brag about how they have loopholes written into the tax code so they don’t have to pay their fair share.
… that Donald Trump is amongst the 1%. I think Secretary Clinton was asking the right question: is he really worth what he says he is? As can be seen with the hair, the reality often takes a backseat to the appearance: and that to a singularly absurd degree; and, so, long thin strands of a few very carefully cultivated pieces sweeps over a much larger, entirely bare (that is to say bald), patch. So it is with the hair. Who’s to say it’s not also true for the accountancy? Certainly, anybody who’d go out in public with hair like that isn’t going to scruple to keep his books straight behind closed doors.
In fact, I think it’s possible he pays nothing in taxes because the unravelling of the great shell game that is his various companies and entanglements would show his overall income to be very close to zero: a manner of ponzi scheme whereby he’s constructed a tight and complicated web of loans and leveraged assets kept aloft by the very tension between competing creditors; a rolling juggling act of moving from sector to sector; real estate; casinos; airlines; steak; tv; where he picks up a different type of ball to throw in the air to avoid anyone seeing that he dropped the previous…
A calculating legerdemaine in which he continually succeeds in covering a very lot of nothing with a very little something might, in fact, be the very genesis of his inflated belief in his own smarts.
who has been sucking off the public teat since he was born on third base and acts like he hit a triple.
Last night the sniveling, eye-rolling, dry-mouthed water sipping, bombastic bully interrupter was called out and exposed for the fraud he is for the whole world to see.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
One problem is Trump probably didn’t cheat on his taxes, he’s been audited often and would have been caught by now if he had. He has groups of accountants who worm their way about the tax laws and find loopholes. But the Donald didn’t write those laws, he’s merely using the loopholes put in the laws by congressmen (both sides of the aisle) who were doing favors for their own special interests that they were trying to protect.
Simplify the tax code but who’s talking about that?
Washington Post has been doing some really good reporting on this, and it sure looks like Trump’s businesses directed business debtors to satisfy business debts by making donations to the Trump Foundation, which could mean that the Trump business did not report the income.
Also, it looks like Trump has used the foundation to fund litigation settlements for his businesses.
That sounds a lot like cheating on taxes.
The tax code is a complex beast, to be sure. Five years ago, it was a slightly less complex beast. Five years before that, less complex still. The question is: did the added complexity close more loopholes than it opened, or vice versa?
The idea that a simpler tax code has fewer loopholes is lazy. It might be true, it might not be — it depends an awful lot on the actual implementation. Many of the complexities of the code are designed to eliminate (last year’s) loopholes…
…all those tax loopholes weren’t written into law by poor people!
That reform eliminated a lot of things like tax shelters and reduced deductions.
But you’re right in saying that it gets more complicated each year. I think that’s because people dream up new things to do with money (or discover new ways around the current laws), and the law needs to keep up.
I pay over $50,000 in Federal Taxes alone. I wonder what people think “paying your fair share” should be.
…for paying that much in Fed taxes…
Unless you’re showing an AGI in excess of something like a million dollars (assuming you file jointly), then I don’t include you in the people that I think do not pay their fair share (others may feel differently). Based on what we heard in the debate, I think Mr. Trump is not paying his fair share.
I think your comment demonstrates what Ms. Clinton is saying: most of us have federal tax obligations, and most of us pay them. Mr. Trump was not in that category during the years cited by Ms. Clinton.
Some of us (not you and not me) should pay far more. It appears that Mr. Trump is one of those who, at least in the years cited by Ms. Clinton, paid no federal taxes at all. I’m pretty sure I owed and paid federal taxes those years, and I make the perhaps rash assumption that you did as well.
Do you think that Donald Trump was living in poverty during those two years?
I once saw Ted Turner say he’d paid no Federal taxes, but that was because of the size of his charitable contributions. I doubt that’s Trump’s reason.
Trump aside (but Wells Fargo in focus) I think that current laws around corporate governance produce significant issues around compensation.
I’m not sure of the answer (and it’s not really a topic that most people can discuss), but the problem is diffuse ownership (think mutual funds) electing an unaccountable board which determines pay for management, and somehow they think $200 million parachutes and $50 million/yr in pay is okay.
There’s not much the regular guy can do about it. Withdraw from your 401K?
My view is that the purpose of government is to do things that the people cannot do for themselves.
I agree with you that there’s not much the regular guy can do about it. I think that’s why we so urgently need strong and effective federal policy that addresses it.
In theory there are controls- stockholder votes. In practice, where Fidelity, holding all that stock in funds, votes with management 100% of the time, it’s not working.
I would be all in favor of changes to laws governing securities, but where we have such a totally effed up system already, with many on all sides having a vested interested in the status quo, I am not confident we’ll see change.
I certainly share your lack of confidence that we’ll see change.
Still, it seems to me that our only prayer is to continue to aggressively improve our tax code. I agree with stomv that “improve” is most certainly not the same as “simplify”.
Still, I think we must redouble our efforts to correct the current situation, where people like Donald Trump pay no taxes while people like you and me pay tax bills of five and nearly six figures.
Makes him a free loader in my eyes.
And lists Hillary’s sensible estate tax increase as the primary reason he is voting for Trump, along with a lot of other drivel. Scott Adams used to be cool man…
Is central to America’s belief that all men are created equal, that there ought not be a noble class. Without the estate tax, as Piketty points out, any culture quickly divides into two classes, one ultra rich & in control and the other poor and hopeless.
Hell, even Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were in favor of the Estate Tax.
I think the reason so many non-rich are talked into opposing the estate taxes is that deep down they think because we are created equal and can achieve great success, that one day such a tax will apply to them.
…vague fantasies of a future self someday, somehow, leaving a heap o coin to offspring hardly “cuts” with the same vigor, depth and strength — if it “cuts” at all — as the very real creation of socio-economic tiers, which will no doubt in time concretize into classes and from there have oppression metastasize on. Oh, you’re not wrong, and maybe many people do think like that, but that’s an irrational response and hardly to be set agains (‘cuts both ways’) the rationalist approach of Piketty, Jefferson and Franklin.
The GOP rank-and-file certainly respond to deceptive monikers like “death tax”. The media do a terrible job of reminding all of us just how few people actually pay those gift and estate taxes. Nor do the media effectively communicate just how dramatically those gift and estate taxes have been cut since the Reagan years.
It certainly is an irrational response for a working-class man or woman to oppose restoring the gift and estate tax to its level during the “glory days” of the US economy — 70-75% (see graph below). It is no accident that the period when our working and middle class was strongest coincides with the period that our gift and estate taxes were at their maximum.
Those who want to restore a sense of prosperity to the working- and middle-class should be supporting the restoration of the gift and estate tax to its historic highs.
Our most immediate economic issue is wealth (as opposed to income) concentration. The gift and estate tax is one of the most effective ways this wealth concentration was controlled until the Reagan years.
A key challenge in accomplishing that is to cut through the “death tax” rhetoric of the 1% and show working-class men and women who pays the gift and estate tax and why.
The creation of socio-economic tiers is a very real and significant part of establishing a “noble” class, and the absence of a generational transfer tax greatly accelerates the creation of those tiers.
A friend (in his 80’s) owns hundreds of acres out here in the sticks, some he inherited from his parents (they’ve been in the area from the early 1800’s) and some he bought over the years himself. For years they paid taxes, logged the land, built houses for new generations and enjoyed the solitude. As time passed civilization has started to encroach, we have some development out here now and he was recently offered over a million for just one of his parcels. His “holdings” are now worth many millions but what he wants to pass down is the ability to go out for a walk, go hunt, create their own space (he gives his kids, grandkids some acreage so they can build their own places).
Why does society get to take the value that has been built up, through hard work, over the years and spread that wealth with others who weren’t as far-sighted as my friends family?
If your neighbor truly wants to pass down “the ability to go out for a walk [or] go hunt”, many options exist for ways to accomplish that (such as the creation of a rural land trust) that avoid the gift and estate tax.
If your neighbor insists on preserving the ability to subdivide, sell, or otherwise financially benefit from the land, then the gift and estate tax is the price he or she pays to society for doing that. Society “gets to take” that wealth so that those hundreds of acres of land don’t become the estate of Lady Whatshername — walled, gated, fenced, and inaccessible to anyone but descendants and their guests.
Realistically speaking, the descendants of that property owner in the situation you describe find a way to sell off a portion of those hundreds of acres and pay whatever gift or estate taxes are due. It’s not an onerous burden, and serves a very real societal purpose.
… in the early 1800’s, life expectancy was less than a third of life expectancy now (your friend would likely not have made it to his 80’s) and this exactly and precisely because of the many things your government does. The very fact he’s had 80 years to spend on it is because of the governments protections, including the protection of the property from unscrupulous people who, absent the law, would have marched a small army of armed men in to take the land by force any time between now and then… assuming, of course, that absent a government some other country would not have invaded and marched a large army in. And, absent all the things the government does the property would not be worth as much to developers who would now wish to pay millions to own it and subsume into what you term ‘encroaching civilization.’
I doubt very much your friend, in all his 80 years had to do much other than enjoy the property and any work he did to it was solely for the sake of his own pleasure, whatever that might be. Absent a government he would have to protect it also. He may have had to build some sort of fortification and hire people to watch over it. He would have had to fight whatever fires happened there on his own. He would have had to clear out predator animals on his own and cull whatever feed animals periodically. All these things government does without, it must be said, making any judgements upon his use of the land. All he had to do was to enjoy it.
Wholly aside from all this, that is to say the fact that you answered your own question twice with the descriptive terms ‘encroaching civilization’ and ‘society’, your friend, actually, doesn’t seem far-sighted at all. It seems like he wants things, as they are now, to always stay as they are now. That’s, in point of fact, the very opposite of ‘far sighted.’ If he was, in fact, ‘investing’ he’d sell the property to the highest bidder. Changing it to suit his own pleasures is not investing and not selling is not investing.
Society does not owe your friend a separate legacy. Society ought to be your friends legacy.
Thank god he had the 2nd amendment (and a dozen siblings) to help him fight off the bands of “unscrupulous people” and wild grizzlies when he settled the wild west. He and his family have been paying taxes all these years.
So when Barack sets aside national park land he’s not “investing in the future”?
that it’s wrong to give welfare to the unemployed because they have not worked for it?
Iowa farmer, harvesting corn on his 2,000 acre farm, comes across a clearing where a native American has a tepee, some hides he’s collected, his family and a horse. The farmer says “Get of my land!” The native American replies “What makes it your land?” The farmer replies “I got is from my daddy who got it from his daddy who oi from his daddy. It’s been passed down for four generations!” And the native American asks, “And where did your great great grandfather get it from?” The farmer replies “He fought the Indians for it!”
The native American rolls up his sleeves, puts up his fists and says “Okay, let’s go”
And then there is this from Benjamin Franklin:
“All property except that needed by individuals for survival “is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.”
There are no “Native” americans. There are some descendants of the pre-historic first explorers of North America who came over the Bering Straits. Unfortunately for them they established a nomadic lifestyle and whenever nomads have bumped up against “settlers” they usually lose, just ask the bedouins, mongols, roma etc.
Let me know what is the limit for “property needed by individuals”? I don’t have a lot but I pay my taxes on it. (Fla taxes are cheaper than Mass). I’ll let the Kennedys and Bushes know if they’ve exceeded their limits with their “compounds” but they would probably qualify for special consideration wouldn’t they.
We’re all from descendants from Lucy, eh? You want me to tell you that the limits for property are? Well, that’s not how it works. We, the people, make that decision collectively. We have varying opinions and we come to a compromise. That’s a little “democracy’ tied into this republic.
But since you asked, I think that anything over an inheritance of $500,000 is “too much” and needs to be spread around. There’s a lot of us out there with nothing.