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So?
The question was about fairness. When concentrated wealth goes to a selected individual or group of individuals, it is usually seen as "fair" when it has been earned in some way. This didn't need to be explained, right?
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So don't save up $2 million for inheritance... No one is forcing you to do that. Not to mention the increased taxes will be paid back, at least to some extent, in enhanced services. Maybe your kids could get a free education and free healthcare instead of $1M each in inheritance. Or instead of increased services, we could tax other things less such as the income of living people. I'd much rather have dead people, who…
Encouraging people to frivolously spend on luxury instead of saving is a terrible idea.
If you taxed boomer-> millennial inheritances at just 25% you could completely eliminate the black-white wealth gap in the next couple of decades. There’s a reason that affluent white people are talking about DEI, and not raising our absurdly low inheritance taxes.
Meanwhile the estate tax in the US only applies to inheritances larger than $12.9 million. People with that kind of wealth also know how to start planning early to avoid the tax, so the tax is practically ineffectual. A fairer inheritance tax could go a long way to fixing the worsening wealth gap in America.
What’s the argument FOR an inheritance tax, when it comes to fairness? The person who’s passsing the money down already paid tax on the money, whether income tax or capital gains tax. The government already got a hefty chunk of that earned money. Why should it be taxed again? Especially when we see how inefficient the government is at spending money for the public good.
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Encouraging people to frivolously spend on luxury instead of saving is a terrible idea.
You just described the entire economy. It's worked out pretty well actually. All spending is someone else's income, which can then be taxed again.
Meanwhile the estate tax in the US only applies to inheritances larger than $12.9 million. People with that kind of wealth also know how to start planning early to avoid the tax, so the tax is practically ineffectual. A fairer inheritance tax could go a long way to fixing the worsening wealth gap in America.
What’s the argument FOR an inheritance tax, when it comes to fairness? The person who’s passsing the money down already paid tax on the money, whether income tax or capital gains tax. The government already got a hefty chunk of that earned money. Why should it be taxed again? Especially when we see how inefficient the government is at spending money for the public good.
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The inheritors didn't earn it.
Neither did the government. Why shouldn’t the person who did earn it get to decide what happens to it? After all, they could choose to donate some to the government. No one does though, voluntarily, because we all know that money would get wasted.
Everybody wants to give money to something where they get their name on a wall and the envy of their rich peers. Meanwhile projects that could be more beneficial to society but don’t have the prestige factor languish. An inheritance tax would level the playing field.
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Gen X has always been screwed. There's never been enough of us to matter demographically. The boomers have us boxed in before us, and Gen-Y/Millenials after.
It will probably be good for GenX during retirement. Nursing homes, elder care and such will be much less burdened than they are now for the baby boomers.
Nursing home? They can't afford long term stay due to lack of assets, but what about the decade or two after retirement age when a nursing home wouldn't be appropriate anyway?
Seems to me the renting-class gen Xers approaching retirement are just going to have to keep working long past retirement age, while it gets more and more difficult, and their housing stays precarious because they can't get a mortgage due to age. I think this is a hidden, underappreciated issue because people tend to think of property-owning gen Xers with a paid-off mortgage, and don't realise how many gen X never made it onto the property ladder.
If you taxed boomer-> millennial inheritances at just 25% you could completely eliminate the black-white wealth gap in the next couple of decades. There’s a reason that affluent white people are talking about DEI, and not raising our absurdly low inheritance taxes.
A 25% inheritance tax, i.e. lose everything your family worked for in just four generations. That's ignoring inflation. The logical conclusion of the idea that where you are born is just an "accident", and you have no legitimate link to your ancestors.
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So you slave away your younger years and pay ~40%+ income tax. You manage to afford 2 children and own a nice house outright by the time you're 65. You have a nest egg large enough to afford a high quality life in retirement (mostly to pay your property taxes & income taxes & capital gains on inflation [not even REAL capital gains]...) You die with $1M to your name plus a $1M estate (this is top ~6% or so). Now you w…
> Now you want to take away 50% of that before passing it on to the kids? Yes, or spend it… I’ve met too many people who are quite concerned about their parent’s wealth and spending later in life, and it seems to become more concerning for the kids once their parents become closer to death. I believe, as a rule of thumb, dynastic wealth is bad for society at large and encourages a rise in rentiers and other parasitic…
if the balances were programmed to be slashed - a portion automatically deleted for inactivity - I would be more into that. note that this is an upgrade from what the Federal Reserve already tries to do in tightening phases like now. This is also what some monetary experiments do to validating nodes.