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L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

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Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#91

Post by lol636363 »

pessimizer wrote: post #66
sokoloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally proceeds from a bank robbery would be removed from the estate. From a purely practical standpoint, once the estate is settled, it should stay settled and no one should be forced to answer for the actions of another adult.

This is just a declaration, not an argument. Under what argument (that also doesn't apply to this) would those proceeds be removed from the estate, and when should an estate be "settled." If somebody sells me a television they burgled from your house, I'd consider the transaction settled once the exchange was made and we'd parted ways. You would probably disagree.

Knowingly buying stolen property is illegal and may result in jail time.

Unknowingly buying stolen property still comes with a risk that if LE ever find it, they can take it away from you without compensating you.

I had my TV stolen and sold to a pawn shop. Detectives found it at local pawn shop and they recovered it for me. These laws exist so that when one is engaged in business, they have to do reasonable due diligence that they are not dealing with stolen or illegal goods.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#92

Post by sokoloff »

unishark wrote: post #61
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

You can't really make an estate tax work higher than the income or gift tax, since people can just sidestep it by giving the inheritance early.

I think of the gift tax as just the pre-death version of the estate tax. IRS Form 709 and Publication 559 make fairly clear that this is not inadvertent.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#93

Post by dusted »

krallja wrote: post #87
dusted wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed how we generally do not bear any responsible for the wrongs of our parents? For instance, we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Seems asymmetrical to me. I'd say, yeah, I guess if you accepted the money, you should accept at least some of the responsibility for how they were amassed.

> we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Uh. The debts are paid with the riches before any inheritance is passed on. That’s part of the process. https://www.dummies.com/personal-finance/estate-planning/how...

What I mean is, that if someone creates a net negative, the descendants are not forced to pay it, yet, if they generate a net positive, they are entitled to receive it.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#94

Post by sokoloff »

dusted wrote: post #93
krallja wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we are not forced to pay their debts, yet, we're somehow entitled to any riches they may have left behind? Uh. The debts are paid with the riches before any inheritance is passed on. That’s part of the process. https://www.dummies.com/personal-finance/estate-planning/how...

What I mean is, that if someone creates a net negative, the descendants are not forced to pay it, yet, if they generate a net positive, they are entitled to receive it.

I think that's thinking about it backwards (at least partly).

My children are not entitled to my estate. My wealth is my private property, not theirs; I am free to direct its disposition as (my spouse and) I see fit. That's the essence of private property rights for the net-positive case.

For the net-negative case, it's a matter of practicality. Your personal debts die with you (they are settled as part of the estate settlement process and if the estate runs out of money, some creditors go without).

If you think inter-generational wealth continuity is a problem now, just imagine how much worse it would be if debt were passed along via negative inheritance.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#95

Post by charlesu »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #49
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

So we should tax the crap out of everyone's estates on the premise that they probably wronged society and that society will need to pay to un-screw up whatever they did?!? Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? Whatever happens to presumption of innocence? Firstly anyone with a brain is gonna conveniently go broke before they die if you try and pull something like that. Second I'm struggling to…

We should tax the crap out of everyone’s estates because it’s aligned with the American value of equal opportunity. Do you want to live in a society where everyone has a fair shot? Then you need the estate tax. It’s the great equalizer. We can the funds to improve our schools, roads, and social services so that everyone is a bit better off.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#96

Post by sokoloff »

athms wrote: post #76
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

Only 0.002% of estates pay the tax every year. The best way to avoid paying the tax is to reduce the wealth of an estate by transferring it to insurance or separate entities like a foundation, limited liability company, family limited partnership, or charitable trust. Most wealthy people start estate planning long before retirement. The ones that end up paying are folks like Prince or the newly wealthy that die young…

> Only 0.002% of estates pay the tax every year.

That is wrong by a factor of ~100. 0.2% of estates in 2017 paid an estate tax. [0]

[0] - https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/ten-facts-you-shou...

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#97

Post by acdha »

tsdlts wrote: post #55
dusted wrote: post #2

It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.. It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money. I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at t…

"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time". Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?

There’s a difference between going after people versus continued businesses, and also randomly criminalizing something versus saying that you had plenty of your own lab data showing that it wasn’t good. They knew this stuff was toxic - that’s why they had to secretly dispose of it at sea rather than just the city dump - so it’s pretty different than, say, suing you because your great-grandfather failed to setup an effective anti-cholera regimen.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#98

Post by eesmith »

macspoofing wrote: post #41
CJefferson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion), someone shouldn't get to inherit millions of dollars just because their grandfather committed some terrible crime -- inheritance should not be a right, when the original money was acquired illegally.

>No-one is talking about putting people in jail, but also (in my opinion) Every law, no matter how small and well-meaning, has implicit threat of prison behind it. You can't be so naïve as to believe that this enforcement action won't result in prison for some, destroyed lives for others, and because laws and enforcement are man-made, there's also a guarantee that your dragnet will punish some innocents, and let some…

Why do people keep making this claim?

There are plenty of laws which don't have an implicit threat of prison behind it.

Here's one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/1 . Quoting Wikipedia: "This is a U.S. federal law, but only suggests voluntary customs for handling of the American flag and was never intended to be enforceable. The code uses non-binding language like "should" and "custom" throughout and does not prescribe any penalties for failure to follow the guidelines." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#99

Post by charlesu »

unishark wrote: post #61
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

You can't really make an estate tax work higher than the income or gift tax, since people can just sidestep it by giving the inheritance early.

Raise the gift tax and income tax as well. High taxes on high earners is a good thing. It spurs investment, flattens the distribution of wealth and income, and spurs spending. Give a millionaire a million dollars and he’ll save it or “invest it”, inflating asset prices even further. Give a thousand people and thousand dollars and most will spend it, helping the economy.

Re: L.A.'s coast was once a DDT dumping ground, but no one could see it until now

#100

Post by charlesu »

athms wrote: post #76
charlesu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great argument for an absurdly high estate tax. You can’t inherit ill-gotten gains if you don’t inherit anything at all!

Only 0.002% of estates pay the tax every year. The best way to avoid paying the tax is to reduce the wealth of an estate by transferring it to insurance or separate entities like a foundation, limited liability company, family limited partnership, or charitable trust. Most wealthy people start estate planning long before retirement. The ones that end up paying are folks like Prince or the newly wealthy that die young…

All loopholes that can be legislated away with enough political will.
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