Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The 100 Percent Estate Tax

I would hereby like to propose the 100 percent estate tax. That's right, 100 percent, every last dime. Oh, we'll carve out an exemption for the support of minor children, but basically, all of Poppy's cash goes away and every adult starts life from the same line. Just think if Paris Hilton had to survive on her own "talents." I'm seeing her as the kind of slutty but not unappealing cashier at the car repair shop, smelling slightly of cheap perfume and cigarettes.

And oh yes, the Bush boys. What if GHWB couldn't have banked the millions old Prescott made financing the Nazis or the cash from the Walker side? This man has no discernible skills and cannot utter a coherent sentence.

And oh his poor bastard son. What if W had neither been rich nor the offspring of a president? I'm thinking line cook at the Outback Steak House. "Hey, Janie, call the manager, George has his head caught in the blooming onion maker again!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about all the middle income people who saved their entire lives? The lived responsibly to leave something for their children and grandchildren. For instance, growing up my parents were very frugal. I had everything I needed, but NOT everything I wanted. My friends had way more than me and I guarantee their parents made a heck of a lot less. They lived OUTSIDE their means. My parents SAVED. Not only do my parents pay extra taxes to cover the careless ways of those people, but they also sacrificed to save their money. Furthermore, my mom went back to school when I was in gradeschool and worked 70 hours a week or more as an executive in my teen years. She sacrificed spending time with her kids and my brother and I lost out on years with our mother. We deserve to inherit whatever they have left since we paid a price for it AND we did not get to live the life of luxury as children. Your socialist ways make NO SENSE. If your tax was passed I would make sure I never saved a penny of my money. Stop being envious and instead strive for something yourself.

montagu said...

"If your tax was passed I would make sure I never saved a penny of my money."

Quite right too. What you call saving money is in fact the hoarding of money, quite necessary under the real conditions of life of course, but within at least the theoretical model of pure capitalism, extremely damaging to the economy, as rather than circulating and thus increasing productivity and profit, it lies dead, benefiting no one. It's all there in Smith.

Under this gentleman's proposal, your mother--rather than working 70 hour weeks to hoard money for your future--could have spent at least part of that time with you, initiating you in the habits and practices of a rigorous bourgeois work ethic. Her experience in making money would provide the best and most genuinely valuable inheritance you could ask for, and moreover, it is only enhanced by the passing of years, unlike money which is rendered incrementally more and more worthless by inflation.

100% estate tax. Everything is earned. Everyone begins at square one. Pure individualism. I am not, nor have I ever been a libertarian, but I suspect that if coupled with total deregulation of trade, markets and industry, and even the elimination income tax, it could be a more productive system of human organization than has so far been witnessed in the history of mankind.

There would of course be killing in the streets if the proposal was ever seriously raised ;)