RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Let us not neglect the fact that the *Estate* tax (there is no inheritance tax) collects about $30b a year right now, so it isn't doing much in the way of redistributing wealth. What's more, regressive loopholes in the income tax are huge compared to Estate tax revenue. I even surprized myself when I did this: http://www.epinet.org/webfeatures/snapshots/archive/2002/0417/snap04172002.h tml mbs Democratic foes of repeal advocate the redistribution of wealth, ``an old Marxist idea that has been rejected everywhere in the world but still has appeal'' in the United States, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, said Tuesday as debate began. Good old Gramm, past master in the uses of the Big Lie in political rhetoric. Gramm's comment is, of course, stunningly and redundantly contrary to fact, most obviously because most other developed countries engage in much more redistribution of wealth than the US (though I was distressed to learn that Italy has repealed its inheritance tax). Second, redistribution of wealth is not only not a specifically Marxist idea (much too timid a social change from a Marxist standpoint), but it's one that obviously precedes Marx (e.g., an article in the most recent American Prospect notes that pre-Marxist James Madison wrote in favor of progressive redistribution to combat social stratification). Propagandist Gramm has also been flogging the death tax chestnut, even arguing the immorality of taxing death, oblivious to the fact that although 100% of the U.S. population (eventually) die, only 2% pay the inheritance tax. And yet Democrats largely cede the moral high ground to reactionary ideologues like Gramm by not challenging such absurd claims. Gil
RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
The former taxes the dead donor. The latter taxes the recipient. The difference could be huge, depending on the details. mbs BTW, what's the difference between the estate tax and the inheritance tax? JD -Original Message- From: Ian Murray To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 6/13/2002 9:52 AM Subject: [PEN-L:26839] Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 9:45 AM Subject: [PEN-L:26838] Inheritance tax is Marxist Inheritance tax is Marxist by Ian Murray 12 June 2002 19:09 UTC Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848 http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#Proletarian Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE ( emphasis added -CB) = The philosophical and legal arguments for abolishing inheritance had been around before KM was even born. CB: You provided the heading - Inheritance tax is _Marxist_. What is the significance of it being Marxist, since, no doubt, the inheritance tax was around before KM was born , too ? Because Phil Gramm, incorrectly, asserted it was a Marxist idea. That Marx was even mentioned by a major US politician in the 21st century is interesting no? Ian Ian
Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
- Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:37 PM Subject: [PEN-L:26874] RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist The former taxes the dead donor. The latter taxes the recipient. The difference could be huge, depending on the details. mbs == Well that is why we should be calling it an inheritance or chance tax on undeserved income to the recipient -- lottery winners are taxed no? How can one tax the dead? Yes the $ difference is very huge and intergenerational is going to continue to grow for the next 50 or so years according to the projections I've seen Ian
RE: Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Title: RE: [PEN-L:26876] Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist here's a topic for a University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation: How the 'Death Tax' Increases the Incentive to Die. (Of course, as many have pointed out, the fact that the Death Tax is reinstated in full 9 years or so from now, after being cut for several years, increases the incentive for presumptive heirs to kill granny before the tax goes up. Or she may want to off herself.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:26876] Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist - Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:37 PM Subject: [PEN-L:26874] RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist The former taxes the dead donor. The latter taxes the recipient. The difference could be huge, depending on the details. mbs == Well that is why we should be calling it an inheritance or chance tax on undeserved income to the recipient -- lottery winners are taxed no? How can one tax the dead? Yes the $ difference is very huge and intergenerational is going to continue to grow for the next 50 or so years according to the projections I've seen Ian
RE: RE: Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Actually there is a serious paper to this effect by my friend Joel Slemrod of U/Mich. It got him the Ig Nobel prize, which he accepted with great delight. In his acceptance speech he said he had proven that some people will do anything for money. mbs here's a topic for a University of Chicago Ph.D. dissertation: How the 'Death Tax' Increases the Incentive to Die. (Of course, as many have pointed out, the fact that the Death Tax is reinstated in full 9 years or so from now, after being cut for several years, increases the incentive for presumptive heirs to kill granny before the tax goes up. Or she may want to off herself.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:51 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:26876] Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist - Original Message - From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 3:37 PM Subject: [PEN-L:26874] RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist The former taxes the dead donor. The latter taxes the recipient. The difference could be huge, depending on the details. mbs == Well that is why we should be calling it an inheritance or chance tax on undeserved income to the recipient -- lottery winners are taxed no? How can one tax the dead? Yes the $ difference is very huge and intergenerational is going to continue to grow for the next 50 or so years according to the projections I've seen Ian
RE: Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Well that is why we should be calling it an inheritance or chance tax on undeserved income to the recipient -- lottery winners are taxed no? How can one tax the dead? Yes the $ difference is very huge and intergenerational is going to continue to grow for the next 50 or so years according to the projections I've seen Ian Lottery winnings are taxable as income, not inheritance. Inheritances are not taxable income. One person's estate could be six persons' inheritances. At either (or both) ends the money could be taxed in light of other income, or not. Put it this way -- do you think it makes a difference if a worker pays a payroll tax, or an employer pays a VAT, the base of which includes payroll? The dollar proceeds do not depend on which type of tax is employed. You can squeeze as much as you like at either end, if you'll pardon the expression. mbs
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
- Original Message - From: Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2002 5:37 PM Subject: [PEN-L:26881] RE: Re: RE: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist Well that is why we should be calling it an inheritance or chance tax on undeserved income to the recipient -- lottery winners are taxed no? How can one tax the dead? Yes the $ difference is very huge and intergenerational is going to continue to grow for the next 50 or so years according to the projections I've seen Ian Lottery winnings are taxable as income, not inheritance. Inheritances are not taxable income. One person's estate could be six persons' inheritances. At either (or both) ends the money could be taxed in light of other income, or not. = My analogy to the lottery was that it's a matter of chance as to the asset portfolio of the family one is born into. It is a matter of what legal theorists and political philosophers call brute luck as 'opposed' to option luck. There's been tons of discussion on those and related issue surrounding liberal and libertarian notions of responsibility and agency in the excellent journals Philosophy and Public Affairs and Ethics. My point is inheritances ought to be taxable income; how can my folks pay a tax on their estate when they die? It's a matter of a temporal 'fault line' and the legal transfer of responsibility for the assets. The argument should simply update Jefferson's letter to Madison: I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living' that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. That portion occupied by an individual ceases to be and reverts to society and Blackstone: For naturally speaking, the instant a man ceases to be, he ceases to have any dominion; else if he had a right to dispose of his aquisitions one moment beyond his life, he would also have a right to direct their disposal for ages after him; which would be highly absurd and inconvenient. Or SC justice Roger Taney on the issue of an inheritance tax: [N]othing more than an exercise of the power of which every state and sovereignty possesses of regulating the manner and term upon which property real or personal within its dominion may be transmitted by last will and testament; and of prescribing who shall and shall not be capable of taking itWe can see no [constitutional] objection to such a tax, whether imposed on citizens [or] aliens. [Mager v Grima 49 US 490, 1850] Max I already gave you a list of texts, here's one more which has an excellent critique of inheritance; The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel [Oxford Univ. Press 2002] It was reviewed in the NY Times just a few weeks ago. Finally, Knut Wicksell: From [the social] point of view the main thing to do would be to take energetic measures to prevent the unearned accumulation of riches (and with it mostly also their uneconomic use) which is now encouraged by law and custom. The only practical way to reach this goal appears to me to lie in the recognition that any right of inheritance, bequest or gift necessarily lies in two parts. There is the right to give and the right to receive. These must be strictly distinguished and each treated on its own merit. To restric the right to give more than is absolutely necessary even now often runs counter to our ideas of justice and equity and also may be seriously questioned on economic grounds. The right of inheritance taken in the second, and more proper, sense of the word as the unlimited right to receive must, if at all be justified in quite different terms. Unless I am much mistaken, it rests *on a now obsolete conception of social and family relationships.* [quoted on Murphy and Nagel 160-161] Put it this way -- do you think it makes a difference if a worker pays a payroll tax, or an employer pays a VAT, the base of which includes payroll? The dollar proceeds do not depend on which type of tax is employed. You can squeeze as much as you like at either end, if you'll pardon the expression. mbs === Ah but when we think intertemporally and intergenerationally it has a massive impact on the distribution of incentives and our normative concerns with good old fashioned equality of opportunity.. Here's the link to the numbers I mentioned in my previous post: http://www.nptaxpolicy.com/Research/Millionaires%20and%20the%20Millennium.pdf Ian
RE: Re: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Title: RE: [PEN-L:26801] Re: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist the left needs some punchy slogans, rather than punching each other. (I'm afraid if I tried to be punchy by saying give me socialism or give me death, most people would give me the latter.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 3:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:26801] Re: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist Michael Perelman wrote: Why are the Repugs so brilliant in framing issues? The Death Tax wording is a stroke of genius. And Gramm saying death shouldn't be a taxable event is too. The NYT quoted that, balanced by a liberal saying we don't tax deaths, we tax inheritances, but that's nowhere near as punchy. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
Neither punchy nor accurate. An inheritance tax is not the same as an estate tax. Better would have been, we tax one in a thousand dead people. The rest can rest in peace. mbs And Gramm saying death shouldn't be a taxable event is too. The NYT quoted that, balanced by a liberal saying we don't tax deaths, we tax inheritances, but that's nowhere near as punchy. Doug
Re: Re: Inheritance tax is Marxist
In a message dated 6/12/02 12:05:28 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Inheritance tax is Marxist by Ian Murray 12 June 2002 Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848 http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html#Proletarian Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE ( emphasis added -CB) = The philosophical and legal arguments for abolishing inheritance had been around before KM was even born. Ian All taxes are paid by the working class since it is the source of value. This value or rather surplus value is privately appropriated by the class of capitalist. Quaint but true. " ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE "is a class demand of the proletariat against bourgeois property relations as accumulated wealth. Inheritance taxes and the likes are products of the struggle within the bourgeoisie. Specifically, the rising sector within the capitalist class must of necessity "wage a merciless struggle" against the decaying sector or segment of private property as wealth, as an aspect of gaining political and economic dominance. That is, the fight against that section of industry that has become antagonisitc to the forward development of the technical apsects of production and its mode of accumulation, is to have its wealth taxed, is the underlying impulse of the inner-capital struggle. In the langauge of the "man on the street" this is no more tha what is called the struggle between "old money" and "new money." " ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE "has no meaning for the proletariat outside of class relationships and the abolition of classes and class privilege. " ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE " is a clarion call for the construction of a society of associated producers who are not fettered by the social power of inherited wealth. The social power of inherited knowledge is another matter altogether. There is nothing Marxian in the inheritance tax. From the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie, inheritance tax appears as another weapon in their arsenal to become free from the big bourgeoisie. Proletarians in the House. Melvin P.
