Elsewhere (117)
Chris Bing on that elite education you could be paying for:
Skidmore College, ranked as one of the nation’s most expensive private colleges in the country, is now officially offering a course on Miley Cyrus: “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media.” The 2014 summer course will be taught by assistant visiting professor of sociology Carolyn Chernoff. “I am interested in cities, arts, and social change, particularly on the level of social interaction and the production of ‘community,’” Chernoff’s professional bio reads on the school’s website. “I investigate the role of culture in reproducing and transforming social inequality, and research conflict around diversity and difference.”
No, don’t. You mustn’t laugh at a woman in hipster glasses.
Tim Blair goes undercover, unsuccessfully, at a Green activist training day:
Next we were called upon to mingle with each other. “Try to find the person in the room who looks as though they hold completely different views to yours,” [anti-capitalist activist Bruce] Knobloch urged, which was an optimistic call, given that everyone at the event was of like mind. A laughing Asian woman turned to me and said: “Everyone should just line up to meet you.”
Do read Tim’s adventure in full. You’ll learn about “non-linear change strategies” and the looming “fascism” of people who aren’t anti-capitalist activists.
Jim Goad checks his “white privilege”:
According to conference founder Eddie Moore, Jr., “White supremacy, white privilege, racism and other forms of oppression are designed for your destruction – designed to kill you.” If that’s the case, privileged whites are doing a piss-poor job, seeing as how the 400,000 or so Africans who were transported to the New World in slave ships have – through the noxious evils of white privilege, white technology, and living amid a predominantly white culture – blossomed into around 40 million modern black Americans. That’s an increase of 100-1 and truly the most inept genocide in world history.
And Tom Paine bids us goodbye and good luck:
To me, [Britain] now seems a strange, immoral place. For example, I read articles in the Guardian and the Times this week about the abolition of inherited wealth. The Economist also recently wrote about it. It did not even occur to any of these columnists that they were talking about the property of others. They did not create it. They did not inherit it. They have no just claim to it. Yet they have no moral concerns about proposing its seizure.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
Dom, they can still have that great relief, just share the wealth while they are alive. I do. Its easy. Actually it is pretty much default if they are married.
Sorry to lower the tone but fuck me, socialists are repulsive.
Smudger, you have the wrong target, in this discussion we are considered ‘fascists’. But I guess the level is about as low, Year 9 more or less.
The fact that the second position is the credo of a thief should give it’s advocate pause,
If this place had an ‘upvote’ button…
Hi Minnow – I quite like the sound of magic.
When I was a child I harboured dreams of becoming a magician, so I stole Ali Bongo’s Big Book of Magic Tricks from the school library.
I was tantalised by promises of learning to AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS and BAFFLE YOUR PARENTS, so my Dad grudgingly handed over his prized digital watch for me to demonstrate my newfound powers of prestidigitation.
Sadly, even at an early age I was cursed with the vice of laziness, or as I prefer to be known, “differently motivated”. I hadn’t read far enough into the book to realise that you were supposed to palm the watch before ostensibly wrapping it in a handkerchief and smashing it with a hammer.
My father certainly was amazed and baffled though.
Anyway, if it’s magic that lets some nice old dear leave a few thousand quid to the carer who made her final years more comfortable and dignified than they might otherwise have been, then it’s benign magic of the non-Sinclair-Black-Watch-destroying type.
If I understand you correctly, you propose a different form of necromancy whereupon someone’s demise the Dementors and Death Eaters of the State get to swoop down and take everything.
Answer truthfully now, because this is the Internet and it’s run on the honour system: have you made a will leaving all your goods to the State, or is it chiefly other people’s inherited wealth that concerns you?
It seems to me the objection to inheritance stems from the idea that it’s not fair that the son or daughter of a rich man or woman should enjoy wealth they didn’t earn. But confiscating inheritance wouldn’t fix that. As has been pointed out above, and as Minnow hasn’t objected to, a rich person can disburse their wealth while still alive, while a person of more modest means can’t. They need what they have to live on, and it’s only when they’re gone and don’t need it anymore that their assets can be disbursed. So confiscation of inheritance would hurt the poor more than the rich.
It also doesn’t stop the children of the rich benefiting from their parents wealth and connections while they’re alive. One of the greatest inequalities is in education, where the children of the wealthy benefit from private education paid for by their parents.
So no, confiscation of inheritance will not increase economic equality. In any case, the only people who are genuinely economically equal are subsistence farmers who are all equally poor, so I don’t see economic equality as something to aspire to. Much better to campaign for equality of rights and equality of access to things like education and justice, and have a sustainable safety net so that nobody is absolutely poor.
What Smudger said.
Hi Patrick – it seems to me that the Inheritance Tax was more about punishing rich posho types with drawling accents and big houses than anything else.
Like the foxhunting ban, or the ritual denunciation of private schools, there’s a section of society that thrills at the idea of sticking two fingers up at Lord Snooty and pals.
Class hatred in this country is mostly aimed at our perceived betters.
I don’t care if you call it meritocracy, facsism or socialism, it is still a spite-driven bludgeoning of interpersonal relationships to serve a ‘greater good’ as identified by some who regard themselves as more enlightened than the rest of us.
My grandmother, a fullblood English Roma who lived her entire life in grinding poverty and high independence from the state had little to leave me beyond a few trinkets (in monetary terms) but which carried with them generations of tradition and history of her family. Would those equally be tossed over to the ever-wise state guardians to sell at a car boot sale?
Minnow, you profoundly insult those of us who grew up ‘disadvantaged’, in one degree of poverty or another, by claiming to speak on our behalf and calling on the state to come to our rescue. I don’t need other people to be cut off at the knees so that I can stand as tall as them. I’ll make myself a box.
Apropos of nothing in particular, the new Captain America film is fun. Worth the price of a ticket just to see Jenny Agutter whupping ass. As I believe the youngsters say.
Jenny Agutter formed a significant part of my adolescence (think Walkabout and An American Werewolf in London and you catch my drift). The notion of her whupping ass is quite exciting. I think I’ll plan a trip to the cinema with my teenage offspring, though as a meritocrat I recognise they’ve done nothing to earn such largesse.
“Answer truthfully now, because this is the Internet and it’s run on the honour system: have you made a will leaving all your goods to the State, or is it chiefly other people’s inherited wealth that concerns you?”
Oh no, I will make sure that my children get as many unfair advantages as I can manage, but even I am not entirely convinced that my selfishness should be the governing principle of the state.
“But confiscating inheritance wouldn’t fix that. As has been pointed out above, and as Minnow hasn’t objected to, a rich person can disburse their wealth while still alive”
There are no solutions to political problems, As Oakeshott pointed out, but there are ameliorations. If a rich person disburses their wealth while alive it will be at least more efficiently managed than doing it while they are dead (dead people are rotten managers). It is also likely to incentivise charitable giving, investment in public spirited projects etc. Of course I completely agree that the rich will continue to have huge unfair, advantages but we shouldn’t therefore structure the law to protect them just because.
“My grandmother, a fullblood English Roma who lived her entire life in grinding poverty and high independence from the state had little to leave me beyond a few trinkets (in monetary terms) but which carried with them generations of tradition and history of her family. Would those equally be tossed over to the ever-wise state guardians to sell at a car boot sale?”
The Roma allow inheritance now? They didn’t use to. Bad luck. But no, I think sums below a certain threshold would be exempt for sentimental reasons.
Dr Cromarty,
The film’s surprisingly tense at times, as when a certain eye-patch-wearing gentleman has, um, difficulties with his car, and it’s silly when it needs to be. Plus, the usual mid-credits teaser should please Marvel comic enthusiasts, hinting as it does of… things to come.
David – I’ve always had specual feelings for Jenny Agutter since Logan’s Run, which was a remarkable film for its prescient depiction of the disco jumpsuit based fashions of the future and Peter Ustinov without makeup. I blame my subsequent anxiety about turning 30 and ongoing mistrust of booming-voiced silver robots on that movie.
I’m not too sure about this Captain America business though. Couldn’t they make a film called Captain European Union where the eponymous hero is a mild mannered former Prime Minister of Belgium who gains super European integration powers after being bitten by a radioactive talking horse called Ashton?
He could have all sorts of adventures battling the evil rosbif, Lord Nigel.
I would pay many Euros to see that.
Minnow – I’m the most self-centred man in the world. So much so that I thought Carly Simon was singing about ME. But I can’t recognise wanting to help your kids as a species of selfishness, not that there’s anything wrong with selfishness.
It’s a natural human instinct and we are lucky to benefit from it.
Is it unfair that some people benefit more than others from advantages handed down by their parents? Sure, but so what?
Is it fair that I’ll never fulfil my lifelong dream of being a wizard?
Most of us give up on hoping the world will be fair after the first couple of letters to Hogwarts asking if they have a mature students class come back undelivered, and by a boring muggle postman instead of an owl at that.
“Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, protein from the sea… Overwhelming, am I not?”
I don’t know if I just missed it somewhere, and not surrendering the rights of the dead to decide where their wealth goes, I do not see where Minnow has established where the state has the right to that wealth. Putting aside nominal taxation on inherited wealth, which I could go either way on. I don’t see where the state has a “right” to that wealth except as it would to tax a portion as it does in many transactions.
Also, what is completely ignored here is that the wealthy, or perhaps just those who can trust their children, can simply devise an arrangement around such confiscation. I’m not sure Minnow understands natural rights and where they come from. Or perhaps it’s just a perception from which side of the pond we’re sitting, but our rights are not granted by the state. The state chooses to recognize our rights, in which case such societies prosper because they are more in tune with the natural order. States that fail to recognize or comprehend natural rights do not result in societies as productive as those who do. Not to be taken as absolutes, just a sliding scale of course.
Oh wow. I’d forgotten about the Logan’s Run spin-off TV series, which traded Ms Agutter for Donald Moffatt.
Jenny Agutter? The red triangle goddess of my adolesence was Nastasja Kinski. Does she whip ass in any superhero films?
I think whipping ass is a more specialist sub-genre.
Also, via Instapundit, more on the “white privilege” conference mentioned above. According to Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher now entranced by “critical whiteness studies,” anyone who goes into teaching “must be political,” by which she means leftwing. Those who wish to teach but aren’t entirely persuaded by the voodoo on offer should, and I quote, “get the fuck out of education.” You see, being a white person is “like being an alcoholic” and white people must, simply must, “admit they have a problem.”
” You see, being a white person is “like being an alcoholic”
My name’s Dr Cromarty and I’m a white person.
There. I feel so much better
I would be much poorer if the inheritance laws were changed.
Or if you were the sort of person who could dispose of his own money in what you consider a moral fashion without the coercive power of the state forcing you to do it.
But I don’t think I deserve to be richer just because I happen to have been born how and where I was.
Allow me to direct your attention to the orange-yellow ‘Donate’ button at the top of the page.
And bgates wins the thread.
I think it perhaps easier and more informative to simply drop some acid than it is to bother viewing the world through the lens of Miley Cyrus.
Bears repeating.
I just don’t think that people should get special privileges when they are dead.
So I write up a document to specify that X is entitled to Y, which belongs to me.
If the property is transferred 5 minutes before I die, according to the document, that’s jake with you. If the property is transferred 5 minutes after I die, according to that same document, it’s a “special privilege.”
WHAT special privilege? The same thing happens when I’m alive as when dead.
Your argument isn’t even based on observable, metaphysical reality. Where do you get this stuff?
FURTHERMORE, estate taxes are designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
Such as the family that owns a chain of dry cleaners. The parents die, leaving the stores to their offspring. The value of those stores is assayed to be X and the tax on that is 0.50X, an amount far exceeding the liquid assets in their collective possession.
So they’re forced to sell the chain to pay the inheritance tax. Who buys up the stores?
The larger dry-cleaning chain, because they’re the only ones who can afford to buy them up, and they’re offering a better price than Joe Schmoe, who can afford maybe one store at a lower price.
Please start with what’s happening on the ground and THEN draw a conclusion.
That’s how we roll around here. Quirky, I know, but humor us.
There’s a strong element of Chesterton’s fence with all this bleating about tax. Anybody who has ever looked at inheritance tax, with its CLTs, PETs, gifts with reservation of benefit etc must realise that it’s pretty complicated stuff. Fiddling with it from a point of total ignorance isn’t likely to be a roaring success.
The charitable view of Minnow’s demands is that he only wishes to prevent people from bequeathing homes and land upon their descendants. He doesn’t actually mention chattel goods, but presumably even he wouldn’t object to people handing down rings and things like that.
The effect of introducing a law like the one he appears to advocate would hardly be egalitarian, however. Taxes on wealth in a sense have the worst effect on those whose assets are illiquid. Preventing those whose wealth is tied up in a house would do nothing to create a ‘level playing field’. The truly rich would go on giving their children an allowance, a superior education and the self-confidence that riches bring in life. It is these things that really give people a head start in life.
In contrast, those whose parents could provide no support in their earlier years would be denied even the compensation of an inheritance later in life.
The argument for consequential theft, as advocated by Minnow, is fairly weak at the best of times. But where the ends are not even achieved, the means are even less appealing.
There are no solutions to political problems,
I categorically deny that inheritance, tax-free or no, is a political problem. I don’t think I’m alone here.
But I don’t think I deserve to be richer just because I happen to have been born how and where I was.
The term “deserve” is a weasel-word. You can insist in this thread that “deserve” comes from performing labor, but in another thread you’ll observe that not all types of labor reap the same recompense, and off we go again.
Yes, it is the case that the neurosurgeon is compensated at a higher rate than the surgical nurse who assists him, who is paid more than the orderly who sterilizes the room and equipment, who is paid more than the guy who empties the gut bucket into the incinerator.
Go ahead and apply “deserve” to that scenario. The knots you’ll tie yourself into should entertain us for the nonce.
What Can Educators do to End White Supremacy in the Classroom?
Well, the simplest answer is to move to a non Caucasian majority country.
Of course there is the lathe of heaven, but that’s a bit specialized.
I’m not sure I understand the idea to begin with. There seem to be two ideas that I don’t see a connection between — one, that dead people have no rights, and two, that people ought not to benefit economically from relatives and should have to earn their own money because otherwise it’s unfair.
Even if it were the case that dead people have no rights, live people can enter into contracts which are triggered by their deaths. If we’re going to have copyright laws that allow a company to have rights until the creator’s death plus some number of years (in the US at least) we’re dealing with a scenario where someone’s death is an element of the lives of others, not the cessation of their existence in all senses. It’s also been pointed out that it’s certainly not more rational for a person’s belongings to default to the government, a government which may have actively hindered that person from acquiring what he acquired while his children may have spent all their time and efforts helping him do so. That’s far from a more fair or just outcome.
It also doesn’t take into account any scenario wherein an older person may be supported in their efforts and wealth creation by a younger person; my family consists primarily of farmers, so the older family members own fields which they purchased when they were younger which are now worked by the younger members, who will inherit them. In many cases a man and his son would work together to build a successful farming business. Most everything would be in the father’s name because he had better credit. If he happened to die of a heart attack unexpectedly the son would own nothing and would lose all his own efforts, as well as those of his father. I don’t see that as a meritocratic outcome.
Secondly, the meritocratic argument is nonsensical. People have various advantages, some economic and some of other kinds. Let’s say Joe and I both have wealthy parents, but while my parents sent me to the best schools and got me a great education and raised me with solid values, Joe’s parents ignored him and did nothing for him. Even if the government confiscates both of our parents’ wealth, my parents still bequeathed things to me that will allow me to succeed more than Joe in the future. As a result he may try twice as hard with half the return. If I produced twice as much, do I “merit” more compensation, even if I didn’t have to try nearly as hard? Or does he “merit” more because he tried harder? Who gets to decide what standard we use?
I didn’t “earn” the intelligence I likewise inherited from my parents. When you really come down to it, very little of what we have is “earned” in the sense that we have it due to our own efforts, and even then our ability to achieve enough to produce anything by our own efforts relies very much on things we inherited and circumstances beyond our control. Poor Africans don’t “deserve” to be poor in the cosmic sense, and I don’t “deserve” to have the advantages of being American. On the other hand you can’t blame me for being American and having all the advantages because it wasn’t my choice. We can’t fix all the cosmic injustices. All we can do is try to set up impartial systems that allow society to function as well as possible.
And when you think about it, inheritance is just contract enforcement, where people are considered to have a default will giving their wealth to their next of kin unless they have written a custom contract. That doesn’t seem so magical.
“The term “deserve” is a weasel-word.”
It really isn’t. Nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents. It is a injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Surely you agree with that much? You don’t really think that Prince Andrew or Peaaches Geldof have what they have because they deserve it?
” It’s also been pointed out that it’s certainly not more rational for a person’s belongings to default to the government, a government which may have actively hindered that person from acquiring what he acquired while his children may have spent all their time and efforts helping him do so.”
Really, these people should stop exploiting their children while they are alive and compensate them for their time and efforts, rather than hoarding the wealth until they die. A change in the law may inspire them to do the right thing.
Nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents.
Yeah, there’s always that annoying wine, women, and loose living bit isn’t there?
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
That’s all it boils down to.
Really, these people should stop exploiting their children while they are alive and compensate them for their time and efforts, rather than hoarding the wealth until they die.
Who’s exploiting? And again, why does the state “deserve” this money? People who know how to generate wealth are more often than not more qualified to determine where it should go both while they are living and after they are dead. The give away here is this “hoarding” perception. You seem to be under the mistaken belief that most wealthy people keep their wealth in bags buried in the yard, in a safe, or under a mattress and sit around counting it a thousand times. That wealth that you so covet is invested in businesses or deposited in banks. It is being used by society to create more wealth.
Of course there is the lathe of heaven, but that’s a bit specialized.
But are you authentically green?
Really, these people should stop exploiting their children while they are alive and compensate them for their time and efforts, rather than hoarding the wealth until they die.
Do you not understand my farming example? You seem to discount the possibility of an older person and a younger person working together on any sort of project. When you’re dealing with a complex enterprise you may have all sorts of tax or other reasons for putting the money in one place rather than the other. If one relative gets hit by a truck, now all the other person’s work is gone, given to a government that did none of the work, for no reason, just so nobody gets anything “undeserved.”
Deserve is a weasel-word because it’s subjective nonsense. You don’t deserve to live; you didn’t do anything to be born, nor do I know what you could do to deserve to live in the first place. I could rectify that situation, it’s within my power, but what people “deserve” according to me isn’t something I’m going to impose on them in the real world. You don’t deserve anything you have because the life you used to gain those things was a pure gift; the skills you have were genetically inherited; your education was done and seen to by others; the country you lived in was made by others and you did nothing to deserve to live in a place they sacrificed for. I could go on and on. I could credit others with everything you’ve ever done, or blame them for it. If you’re considering giving me money, then whether I “deserve” it according to you is meaningful. When we’re talking about what Thomas Sowell calls “cosmic justice,” it’s just a way for you to say that whatever you like should be enforced on others by the state.
In the end, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” We all have things happen to us that we didn’t deserve in the cosmic sense, and we get things we didn’t deserve too (starting with life itself). Just being born in the US or Britain, we’ve gained a windfall so great that it’s hard to imagine. Will you give that windfall away so you’re not starting ahead of any others? Will you go live in Ethiopia to see how far your merit gets you?
You don’t really think that Prince Andrew or Peaaches Geldof have what they have because they deserve it?
I made it clear that I am rejecting the concept of “deserve” entirely, because reality does not employ it, and it’s damned near impossible for us to implement it ourselves. “Deserve” by what criteria? Administered by whom? Who “deserves” to stand as judge over great and small?
I would, however, make one exception to the rejection of “deserve”: People should have to live in the world that they dreamed of for others.
Minnow
No, quite the opposite, I would be much poorer if the inheritance laws were changed. But I don’t think I deserve to be richer just because I happen to have been born how and where I was
Covetousness (and the commandment against it) is about your desire for things that are not yours. And nothing says more about coveting than a desire to have people who earn/own stuff not do with it as you desire… so better to have The State come in and take it, even if it means you are poorer too, at least you got to inflict pain on the other guy.
It’s the basis of trying to bring up the “well, some heirs are bound not to use the property wisely.” Guess what, still not your property nor concern. If someone wants to buy a house, feed the homeless or blow it all on booze & broads, it is none of your business.
And really, if you can root out the covetous motivations at base of your obsession with Other People’s Stuff, you’ll be a happier person.
Nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents. It is a injustice.
Injustice? Yikes, what a perversion of the word.
What was I thinking? The concluding paragraph is even better:
Y’all need to find an uninhabited island — northern Canada is lousy with them — or some vast wilderness — most of Siberia and Australia is free — and build ya the paradise you so long have dreamed of where everyone gets exactly what they deserve.
Because you would get it. Good and hard.
So Minnow was walking along the beach and came upon an odd little brass lamp. S/he grabbed it and buffed it up a bit and a big old genie appeared.
Genie: I will grant you one wish, but I must warn you, whatever you wish for yourself, your neighbor will get double.
Minnow: [thinks a bit, then thinks some more] Put out my eye.
I’m not sure I’ve much to add. I think Minnow has made his/her own position sufficiently disreputable.
Though Darleen’s comment about covetousness and happiness bears repeating. Being fixated with other people’s earnings and property, the size of their homes and their choice of school, isn’t a recipe for happiness or clarity or kindness. The feelings that grow around such preoccupations tend to be unflattering and corrosive, very often spiteful or openly sadistic. It’s a phenomenon that’s illustrated by the Guardian on a weekly basis, as the archives here demonstrate. And being ostentatiously peeved that others aren’t being coerced into actions that you choose not to take voluntarily, despite professing the virtue and necessity of such oddly untaken actions, is a dissonance that invites mockery. Hereabouts at least.
Minnow – where do you stand on organ donation? Are my wishes on that score to be ignored?
How about old ladies who leave everything to the Cats Protection League? Should their bequests be taken away and used as bureaucrats see fit? What will be the impact of this on how charities act?
What about restrictive covenants on property? The landowner – if we are permitted to own land! – can no longer benefit from the view of the estuary, so can we just build over it?
Actually, why are we permitted to own land? Is it fair? Why should we tolerate it while people are alive but not the passing on of it when they die?
Should we allow private education? If so, why is that ‘just’?
Ultimately, how will you enforce your view of justice? And why is your view just?
I hesitate to add one more comment to this insanely long thread, but I should add (if no one has already) that the desire to end (or tax) inheritance is just one fight in the battle. Since “nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents” then parents can not pass their wealth or their knowledge or their skills to their children even when they are alive. That is the reason the left hates private education, even home schooling.
There is a mind set in the western world that holds that any differences among children must be “an injustice”. To this mind set, we must tell Duke Ellington that he has to work as a shoe-repair man, because his musical genius was acquired unjustly. They have not figured out that the rest of us profit more from Ellington’s music that we do from Ellington’s shoes. What they want is poverty, because poverty is justice.
Minnow: “Nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents. It is a injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Surely you agree with that much?”
No, I don’t. Your way would have deprived us of The Origin of Species, which only came about because Darwin had enough time to do the research, because he was independently wealthy thanks to his father’s investments and his wife’s share of the Wedgwood porcelain fortune. Darwin didn’t earn any of that, but he put it to good use.
Wealthy people pay taxes. Some wealthy people invest their surplus wealth in large-scale enterprises, which pay taxes, and employ people, who pay taxes. Not all wealthy people do this, of course, but only wealthy people can. The state and its welfare provision depend on taxation, and taxation is only possible where there is surplus wealth. Arrange things so everybody has the same amount of surplus wealth, and you get inflation, as the price of goods and services rises to what everyone can afford, and that surplus is wiped out.
Our entire economy, NHS, free education, welfare state and all, depends on the unequal distribution of wealth. If you’re clever enough to create an economic system that doesn’t, that still provides the poorest with a comparable standard of living, and doesn’t require the execution of vast numbers of inconvenient people, have at it.
I’m not quite sure why we’re discussing the property rights of dead people. When someone dies, the property vests instantly in the living; the dead don’t own anything. Probate might take a while. It’s not like the property is hanging around in some kind of limbo.
Minnow: “Nobody deserves to be wealthy just because they were born to wealthy parents. It is a injustice. If we can rectify it, we should.”
Ah, a wonderful principle on which to base a society. But why stop at wealth? We won’t even need plastic surgeons.
Nobody deserves to be tall just because they were born to tall parents. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out the hacksaws.
Nobody deserves to be handsome just because they were born to handsome parents. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out the boric acid.
Nobody deserves to be musically talented just because they were born to musically talented parents. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out the 2-pound hammer.
Nobody deserves to have nice rounded breasts just because she were born to a mother with nice rounded breasts. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out the corsets and the pulley systems.
Nobody deserves to be intelligent just because they were born to intelligent parents. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out that vintage lobotomy equipment.
Nobody deserves to be possessing White Privilege just because they were born to White parents. It is an injustice. If we can rectify it, we should. Bring out the tanning beds and the voltage converters.
All joking aside, I’m surprised no-one brought up certain strictly utilitarian arguments against the 100% inheritance tax. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, considering how weighty all the other arguments against it are. But for the fun of it, consider this –
Britain is pretty much bankrupt, and here we have a suggestion to let the government confiscate all your worldly goods the moment you die. How conducive would this be to British longevity? Do you think the state will be funding any new mammography equipment any time soon? How about fixing broken railings on high-speed roads? No? What about speed limit enforcement? Would a dozen speeding tickets be more or less profitable than one fatal accident? Lucius Cornelius Sulla is starting to look like an amateur.
How many soldiers would remain in uniform? We’ll have to make an exemption for them. What about firefighters? Policemen? Lifeguards? Bomb disposal squads? Test pilots? You’ll have more exemptions than for Obamacare.
Lots of prime ministers have been assassinated, it’s a risky job. Gotta add the big man. And ex-prime ministers, of course. Plus the cabinet. And the house of Lords. Both houses, actually. What about senior civil servants? How soon would you have a two-class society, those with exemption from the tax and those without? And how soon would the exempt try to bequeath that privilege to their children?
Interestingly enough, this is a revival of an ancient Feudal concept – land tenure – and its application to the entirety of a man’s property. Land is not owned; it his Held from your Lord, who holds it from his, all the way up to the King. When you die, your son may inherit it, but not directly – he must give an oath of fealty to your Lord, who will then give it to him to Hold, minus a small tax. Progress!
You seem to have forgotten a fundamental fact of human existence. “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time; as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.” – Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
Man knoweth not his time. If you expect men to keep working as if they will live forever, you must honor their Wills when they are dead.
Jonathan, I’m with you on all of that, except the land issue. I wish it were otherwise but fundamentally you don’t own land unless you have an army to defend it. Real estate law recognizes this fact in much more polite and obfuscated language than I can muster. But fundamentally, by natural law, it is thus.
Hmmm. What Minnow is speaking in favour of is certainly interesting, in the sense of the old Chinese curse.
Fundamentally, he has invalidated the entire concept of life insurance, and turned it in to a marvellous new form of taxation: pay into an LI scheme all your life, and on your death the Treasury gets a payout! On top of getting your house complete with your collection of 1990s acid jazz CD’s. Never mind the upkeep of the widow or the children, dead people clearly have no right to provide for their dependents in their absence. How selfish of me to think that my LI planning such that, in the event of my untimely demise, the wife & kids could relocate “back home” and live off the LI payout for a good long period, would be in vain, since the moment I kick the bucket I have no further rights, and all my base are belong to the State.
As to his suggestion that parents transfer their wealth to their children during their lifetimes, what a marvellous suggestion. The parents are then entirely dependent on the good will of the children not to kick them out of the house they paid for, and to give them an allowance or permission to dispurse funds not locked away in an annuity or other form of pension scheme. If they need to sell the house or the business to go into care, they have to get the new owners to do it. Fantastic! And what happens if one of the kids goes bankrupt? Bye bye parents, the county court has just sold their house from under them.
Also, I look forward to my parents handing over 50% of their house and their other assets to me, and me enjoying the eye-watering international taxation consequences of such a transfer.
Of course, such exempt transfers during the lifetime will be seen by the Richard Murphies of this world as tax avoidance. So we’ll have to have some kind of gift tax as well to remedy that, like they do in the US and in much of mainland Europe. Call it a kind of pre-death death tax. Maybe the EU could insist on gift-tax harmonisation? Remember already that transfers during life are only “potentially exempt” – if the old girl carks it within 7 years, it is still counted for IHT.