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My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

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Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#151

Post by jdmichal »

happytoexplain wrote: post #117
zxcvvcxz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about maintaining some sense of balance, responsibility, and austerity in our societies, instead of forever marching towards a fictional leisure-filled utopia?

What leisure-filled society are you referring to in the post you originally responded to, and where are you getting the notion that somebody here thinks such a thing would be a utopia? All I saw in that quote was the ideal of achieving a world where we have the right to work hard at whatever passions we have, which sounds like a hacker's utopia to me.

I think the charitable interpretation would be [0]: Conflation of economic value with non-leisure classification. That is, if it had economic value, then they should be able to make a living doing it. And doing an activity for a living could certainly be seen as an operating definition for "non-leisure activity".

So, by such definition, if everyone is free to run around and do whatever activity they want, then either every activity is economically valued and thereby non-leisure... Or everyone can somehow take part in leisurely activities without regard to making a living. Which could certainly be seen as an operation definition for "leisure-filled utopia".

[0] Not GP. This is me possibly putting words into GP's mouth, while also asserting that these are not my words.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#152

Post by rigged-system »

secabeen wrote: post #34
ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

The gift tax exists largely to prevent people from avoiding estate tax by gifting large sums of money just before death. That's why they're linked. If there was an estate tax and no gift tax, people would just give all their money away in the years leading up to death. The gift tax exemption is co-mingled with the estate tax exemption, so you can just think of the gift tax as pre-death estate taxes. As for why we hav…

>> oligarcies and plutocracies are bad >> the pernicious effects of wealth snowball as generations pass

I feel like the exact situation that our country is in right now is the exact outcome I would fear from such a situation as you describe.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#154

Post by Luc »

charlesdm wrote: post #150
Luc wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even better - in Belgium you can avoid even the 3% gift tax by simply donating the money AND not dying within 3 years (if you do, however, the donation then gets taxed as if it were part of the inheritance, so it may be worth just paying the gift tax).

This is not possible for all assets, but yes.

Yes, 'money'. Not real estate.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#155

Post by empath75 »

ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

Explain the rationale for why certain people should be born into a massive inheritance of wealth and power while others are born only to starve to death.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#156

Post by dragonwriter »

secabeen wrote: post #34
ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

The gift tax exists largely to prevent people from avoiding estate tax by gifting large sums of money just before death. That's why they're linked. If there was an estate tax and no gift tax, people would just give all their money away in the years leading up to death. The gift tax exemption is co-mingled with the estate tax exemption, so you can just think of the gift tax as pre-death estate taxes. As for why we hav…

> As for why we have an estate tax, the general idea is that oligarcies and plutocracies are bad

No, the reason we have an estate tax with broad exemptions rather than taxing generational transfers as income is the general idea in the ruling class that oligarchies and plutocracy are good.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#157

Post by darawk »

I agree with a lot of this article, but the answer here is definitely not to enable more people to go into the arts on the public dime. If you want free college, let's have it be free for everything except the arts. If you want to get an MBA, or learn mechanical engineering, i'm happy to subsidize that. But I have no interest whatsoever in subsidizing your creative writing degree.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#158

Post by dv_dt »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #81
dumbfoundded wrote: post #72

Relevant John Adams quote: I could fill volumes with descriptions of temples and palaces, paintings, sculptures, tapestry, porcelain, etc., etc., etc.—if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences: the art of legislation and administration and negotiation, ought to take place, indeed to exclude in a manner all o…

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Why should we aim to have future generations of artists and leisure enthusiasts, only so the cycle can begin anew?

I think it is a pretension to assume it is the artists and leisure enthusiasts who are the weak. Perhaps it is all the men of strong skills and closed minds who cannot achieve, or even envision good times - they bring the hard times because that is all they think is possible in the world, or perhaps all that it deserves.

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#159

Post by rafd »

ntumlin wrote: post #21

Maybe this isn't the right place to ask, but could someone explain the rationale for taxing gifts within a family? Ignoring the possibility of using it to circumvent an income tax, etc., my initial thought is that if my dad wants to give me $30,001 this year, or even $300,000 this year, that he's already paid taxes on it and it's not the government's business. I feel the same way about inheritance taxes, although tho…

AFAIK, many countries do not tax gifts or have an estate tax (ex. Canada).

Re: My Parents Give Me $28k a Year

#160

Post by dubya23 »

crooked-v wrote: post #45
mobileexpert wrote: post #27

A refrain that is very true in NYC. It is a bit off-putting (and just wrong) to read the author talk about white male privilege being a comparable head start to her half a million dollars of family money she’s received. (And 28,000/yr still coming!) For an essay centered on owning up to personal privilege it still has some serious short comings in recognizing how extreme her wealth privilege is versus almost all intr…

Consider that even well-known black movie stars occasionally get the "shopping while black" treatment. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest-whitaker-fa... Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.

Why is this comment even necessary? The number of dirt poor rural whites in the US is staggering. Would you be comfortable telling such a person that they have immense privilege because of their white skin? They'll probably slap you silly.
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