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Who died and left the US $7B?

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Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#211

Post by gammarator »

geysersam wrote: post #183
metacritic12 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious fix is to not step up basis on death. The estate tax already means that the estate of a person who dies may need to sell / divide / split stuff to pay the government. There already is no fundamental protection for an asset passing unscathed from a parent to a child. I don't see how not stepping up basis qualitatively changes this. And your argument of "you want a child to be able to inherit a family busin…

It's a funny argument the one about the family farm. In this case it's not even about inheritance tax. It's a sob story about a guy who couldn't inherit the farm because his dad owed the state money because they had let him not pay tax on his capital gains for a long time. Sorry for not tearing up.

It also rarely applies to farms. https://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-myth-that-the-estate-tax-threa...

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#212

Post by geysersam »

sologoub wrote: post #205
geysersam wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, This is a bad argument. Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc. It's a very common fallacy of people criticizing public spending to point to the stock market and say "Look! Imagine how rich we would be if we had just invested the public spending instead." Completely falling into the trap of disc…

> Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc. Not presently. Most tax dollars are spent elsewhere and infrastructure/education get less than 7%: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Even that spending is not effective. Drive California roads and you’ll often see fixes that aren’t much better than the damaged roads they replaced. And let’s not talk about our wonderful t…

It's invested. In infrastructure, schooling, endless wars on foreign soil, etc. You not agreeing with the quality of the investment is a separate issue. You probably don't agree with every investment in the private sector either.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#213

Post by _bin_ »

geysersam wrote: post #183
metacritic12 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious fix is to not step up basis on death. The estate tax already means that the estate of a person who dies may need to sell / divide / split stuff to pay the government. There already is no fundamental protection for an asset passing unscathed from a parent to a child. I don't see how not stepping up basis qualitatively changes this. And your argument of "you want a child to be able to inherit a family busin…

It's a funny argument the one about the family farm. In this case it's not even about inheritance tax. It's a sob story about a guy who couldn't inherit the farm because his dad owed the state money because they had let him not pay tax on his capital gains for a long time. Sorry for not tearing up.

You can't just arbitrarily set the status quo that way, can't just sneak a premise that the state has default a right to collect a piece of arbitrary appreciation on an asset (as all assets are used for speculation) when the owner hasn't actually gotten cash from that, and that any government that doesn't tax that is just cutting someone a break on something rightfully owed. The state of nature is no tax, and as it's unpleasant, we create societies and fund them with taxes that we must deliberate and determine to be just and reasonable. You don't get to argue from the point that your preferred taxation regime is simply how things should be and that how things are is therefore wrong, especially not without a justification.

I'd also point out that people's assets have gone up in nominal terms in the past few years, but for many that's not reflective of an increase in purchasing power. Much of that increase is due to excess inflation from the profligate overspending of our past two administrations, so the cycle currently looks like this: government prints money and causes inflation -> your assets are "worth more" -> taxman says "give me a piece of that" even though your real wages have fallen or have just barely recovered to pre-2020 levels. And of course, even if we index to inflation, that will necessarily hit the poor harder: food and energy are deemed "too volatile" to include in headline CPI, but as necessities, they comprise a larger part of poor households' spending and so inflation will hit them harder than the numbers suggest.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#214

Post by fakedang »

umeshunni wrote: post #36
seb1204 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the rich list is just a list of rich people that also desire others to know of their riches.

Famously, there was the Saudi billionaire who would pump up the price of his stocks in the months prior to when they published the rich list.

Al Waleed bin Talal. Shrewd businessman, but also one of the most fragile egos out there.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#215

Post by lazide »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #199
fallingknife wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly distinction because by that standard you could equally say that my employer pays my rent because they are the source of income which I use to pay it. Property tax in the US is a liability of the owner. This is in contrast to other systems like the UK where it is a liability of the occupant.

The incidence of taxation is a well-studied concept in economics, with a solid theoretical foundation and empirical evidence backing it. You dismiss its application as a 'silly distinction' and repeat the fallacy that the incidence of taxation falls on the party who is legally liable. If you don't believe me, and don't want to read up on 'tax incidence', consider what would happen if sales tax were paid by retailers…

This is an entirely ridiculous argument. Who actually ‘writes the check’ is actually important in a discussion about who writes the check, despite the fungibility of money. Renters don’t pay the owners property taxes in the US, even if they pay rent. Full stop.

Why this matters is because in some cases, owners can end up ‘under water’ with even rent not covering property taxes in the US.

In other places, that may not be possible.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#216

Post by aebtebeten »

defrost wrote: post #78
BurningFrog wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't become a vassal by someone else having a lot of wealth. The feudal systems arose as a way to organize military defense locally in the absence of a strong central power like the Roman Empire.

Feudal systems are better described as local organised threat of violence. There are castle strongholds, control of choke points, a lower strata that are required to work the land and pay tithe upwards to the military heirarchy. Feudal systems have existed in times and locations where there was little need for military defense against external forces, they persist in form as a polite, polished, chivalrous bikie club…

> Warrior nobility systems farm farmers

A farm is a system with many living beings, but most of the benefits accrue to those we call the farmers.

A farmer farm is a called a fief (feudum in latin), so it's no surprise that under feudalism most of the benefits accrue to those who have control over heaps of feuda.

Would it be true that under capitalism most of the benefits accrue to those who have control over heaps of capital?

[to the original point: capitalism works very well when it allows people to trade and specialise in their comparative advantages; under what conditions might it work less well?]

EDIT:

> little need for military defense against external forces

I think they were also successful even where there was need, as long as those external forces were also based on a warrior class.

What Napoleon managed was to "scale" the nature of warfare; two poorly remembered quotes from a book one of his cavalry generals wrote:

— 10 mamluks could beat 30 french, but 100 to 100 was even, and 300 french could beat 1000 mamluks

— our troopers' horsemanship was pitiful, and their officers' not much better, yet with this cavalry we made the tour of Europe

I'd say both point to innovation in the use of mass over class.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#217

Post by kelseyfrog »

_bin_ wrote: post #176
cperciva wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. In Canada, assets are deemed to have been disposed of upon death (or gifting) so the estate pays capital gains taxes on the accrued profit. There are a few exemptions for political reasons, e.g. to allow farmers to pass appreciated farm property to their children tax free, but they're sufficiently limited that they don't cost very much…

Family farms are a good example but there are still plenty of others like a family business. I wouldn't care to see an increasing fraction of assets fall into institutional ownership simply because people are taxed out of owning them intergenerationally. There's a massive difference between "the government will tax you for part of your value" and "the government will, over a sufficient time, tax you entirely out of e…

Help me understand why a family farm would have such an issue if the owner-operator dies, but Walmart didn't when Sam Walton died? Is it an issue of incorporation/business structure?

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#218

Post by bruce511 »

sologoub wrote: post #205
geysersam wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, This is a bad argument. Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc. It's a very common fallacy of people criticizing public spending to point to the stock market and say "Look! Imagine how rich we would be if we had just invested the public spending instead." Completely falling into the trap of disc…

> Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc. Not presently. Most tax dollars are spent elsewhere and infrastructure/education get less than 7%: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Even that spending is not effective. Drive California roads and you’ll often see fixes that aren’t much better than the damaged roads they replaced. And let’s not talk about our wonderful t…

Most tax dollars go to social security, health (including medicare) interest and defence.

So on the one hand, very little of that is infrastructure. Mostly it seems to go on "keeping people alive".

Now sure, the govt could invest the money instead, and let a bunch of (mostly old) people die.

In our "money" equation, old people have little practical value (and there's no line in our fiscal analysis for measuring our humanity).

Which perhaps is why it's best not to evaluate returns on govt spending the way you would measure returns on personal investments.

[As a PS I'd add that all those taxes, flowing back to the old people, is flowing back into the economy, which is what keeps businesses in business, and keeps those share prices going up.]

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#219

Post by _bin_ »

metacritic12 wrote: post #179
_bin_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something people love to rage about, yet it's not one with an obvious fix. The counterpoint is that this leaves money invested, which means others invest in other things, and still entails interest payments. It exists in part because you don't want someone who inherited his parents' house and wants to move in to go broke trying to pay taxes, or have to re-mortgage it, with an even stronger case with family fa…

The obvious fix is to not step up basis on death. The estate tax already means that the estate of a person who dies may need to sell / divide / split stuff to pay the government. There already is no fundamental protection for an asset passing unscathed from a parent to a child. I don't see how not stepping up basis qualitatively changes this. And your argument of "you want a child to be able to inherit a family busin…

There's also no fundamental reason for the state to institute any form of estate tax; on the contrary, I specified it goes against our usual federal regime of taxing value as it's moved rather than value at rest. If anything, I'd question why you believe there's some inherent reason or right to have any form of estate tax, let alone to the point one forces liquidation of assets. One form of taxation can be more or less just than another and it's much easier to make the moral case for using force to collect a portion of value moved through government infrastructure (banking system, roads, ports, etc.) than something that remains unsold.

I didn't say taxation is theft and would rather you didn't put words in my mouth. You're assuming I'm against any form of taxation whatsoever on a moral basis, which isn't actually true. I think there are values reasons (most of us actually like the idea of a family business staying in a family, not getting sold to private equity) and moral reasons why we should continue resetting the tax basis of inherited assets. As a compromise position, I think it would be more reasonable for you to suggest removing the stepped-up basis but not counting inheritance as a taxable event.

Re: Who died and left the US $7B?

#220

Post by Log_out_ »

_bin_ wrote: post #213
geysersam wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny argument the one about the family farm. In this case it's not even about inheritance tax. It's a sob story about a guy who couldn't inherit the farm because his dad owed the state money because they had let him not pay tax on his capital gains for a long time. Sorry for not tearing up.

You can't just arbitrarily set the status quo that way, can't just sneak a premise that the state has default a right to collect a piece of arbitrary appreciation on an asset (as all assets are used for speculation) when the owner hasn't actually gotten cash from that, and that any government that doesn't tax that is just cutting someone a break on something rightfully owed. The state of nature is no tax, and as it's…

yes, we can. the whole premise of a democracy is that every law is a solid majority away from being turned over.one of the reasons big money is inherent anti-democratic.
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