Elsewhere (241)
Ben Sixsmith finds another Guardian writer with a spiteful confiscation fetish:
What I found most unpleasant in [Abi] Wilkinson’s article [advocating a 100% inheritance tax] is her acceptance that there could be “a small allowance for objects of sentimental value.” It brought the reality of the idea home. Imagine relatives being forced to beg to keep their family heirlooms. Your granddad’s books? Well, okay. It’s not as if they’re first editions. Your mother’s piano? Sorry, pal. Too big for this allowance. Your grandmother’s house? Forget it. We’re selling it off.
[ Added: ] Ms Wilkinson responds to her critics.Michael Aaron on the mental contortions of being “woke,” and why they spread:
How could it be possible that so many people, large cohorts of students, and indeed entire academic disciplines, are so bamboozled into believing much of postmodernist rhetoric, including that science is a symbol of the patriarchy (you’ve got to click on the link, the title is “Science: A masculine disorder?”) and that the concept of health is merely another tool of Western colonial oppression?
Lee Jussim on the bias of assuming unfair “gender bias”:
The societal push to equalise gender distributions may be deeply dysfunctional, because it can succeed only by having the perverse effect of pushing people into fields they do not prefer. Of course, on moral grounds, we want to ensure that all people have equal opportunities to enter any particular career. But if there are bona fide gender differences in preferences and interests, equal opportunities may never translate into equal outcomes.
And Shannon Spada on political asymmetries:
A recent poll conducted by Pew Research Centre produced results suggesting… that Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to say that it would “strain” their relationship to learn that a friend had voted for the other party’s candidate. Among all respondents (not just college students), 35 percent of Democrats said that a friend voting for Donald Trump would strain their friendship, while only 13 percent of Republicans said that a friend voting for Hillary Clinton would have the same effect.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Alas, WTP, IME internet commenters are poor candidates for activation.
Also, you’re regrettably sliding towards redistributionism. “If just some of the money wasted. . .were redirected to more of an education of the masses. . . .” No, thank you. Yes, yes, I know you didn’t say the State should do it, or even implied the initiation of force to cause it. But that is where the first step on that road leads. No, barmate; if you want the money redirected, you have to build a better mousetrap, or app, or otherwise innovate. You must outcompete the status quo. That is, after all, how we all got here ITFP.
“Teach people the fundamentals and they will make better decisions for themselves.” Again, alas, no. Some people will, but probably not the majority. You must make the better decisions more appealing in more ways than just education.
Regarding the 100% inheritance tax.
Another aspect of this is the impact on a family owned business. Even putting aside the likely limits on lifetime gifts Theophrastus mentions above (which would be inevitable), imagine if the founder of a closely held family business happens to die unexpectedly.
The ownership of that business would be part of the estate, of course, and all the founder’s ownership interests would be confiscated and sold off to the highest bidder to provide cash to the government. Now, most likely, the new owners (probably some big public company specializing in buying controlling interests of such companies at auction) will bring in new management. So, not only do the children lost out on an inheritance of cash and other goods, they also end up unemployed and their careers suddenly on the rocks.
The broader result would be that many small and medium businesses could not last more than a generation.
And all of this is certainly intended.
It’s frequently the case that when the children inherit the family farm or the family business they’re unable to pay the inheritance tax without liquidating the asset.
Which is then snatched up by a poor family from Vietnam, who becomes wildly successful and sends enormous remittances back home, thus propping up the economy of an entire village.
HA! You peeked! It’s actually sold to a conglomerate, because they’re the only ones who can offer a good price on the asset. Thereby rendering the rich richer and the poor poorer.
“It’s actually sold to a conglomerate”
And the name of that conglomerate, often enough in the US, is Berkshire Hathaway; CEO being one Warren Buffett.
Yes, the kindly old granpa type revered and lauded by people like Barack Obama is a rapacious tomb raider, profiting off of other people’s death and misery.
But he publicly calls for higher taxes on the rich, which makes him Saint Warren to the redistributive crowd.
It’s nice work if you can get it.
Ms Wilkinson is currently flattering herself and blaming sexism for the blowback to her fantasies of state confiscation. It’s because she’s a “young woman daring to write this sort of thing.”
You see, if you endorse spiteful and totalitarian ideas, and then the people on whom these ideas would be inflicted say mean things to you on the internet, this is all terribly unfair, and not at all your fault for having spiteful and totalitarian inclinations and wanting to expropriate their life’s savings.
Or, put another way:
Not, I think, an entirely unfair summary.
Is Ms Wilkinson a Nazi? After all, they did rip gold fillings from the mouths of Jews before they were gassed. Along with the thefts of expensive art. Of course she would comply with her own thinking with her kids and granchildren around her to leave all of her things to the State. Wouldn’t she?
till, those who support sin taxes as a means of encouraging people to be more virtuous can’t/won’t make the connection that taxing human production has an adverse impact on the amount of what’s
====
Since they are Socialists they are, ipso facto, too stipid to understand this, and even if by some miracle they achieve understanding they are too dishonest to admit it.
Socialism is, at heart, the politics of envy and hatred.
Related Utopian thinking.
Of course, by “Utopian”, I mean abjectly idiotically clueless and basically totalitarian, all the worse because it was written by a Danish MP.
Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better
Yeah, good luck with that last one, LUH 3417.
Read the whole thing, it is gobsmackingly puerile, no where is it addressed where all the robots, AI, food, clothes, and whatnot come from. What is appalling is that so much of the left actually wants to live forever as children with some all controlling government as parents.
“Attention, comrades. I want the state, which is flawless and glorious, to confiscate your belongings and significantly degrade the life chances of your children, for whom you shouldn’t much care, compared to other, random children, because fairness.”
That.
That.
This homogenising fantasy, in which normative family bonds are disdained, is a recurring theme in leftist posturing, and a telling one. See the links in my earlier comments, and also this small compendium of examples:
And of course there’s this equally revealing item, in which Marxist philosopher Adam Swift insists that:
Because caring, functional parents who make sacrifices for their children have something to atone and apologise for. Having done the best they can for their children and having given them opportunities, they have sinned against “social justice.”
T’aint just wrong. It’s pathological.
Also, you’re regrettably sliding towards redistributionism. “If just some of the money wasted. . .were redirected to more of an education of the masses. . . .” No, thank you. Yes, yes, I know you didn’t say the State should do it, or even implied the initiation of force to cause it. But that is where the first step on that road leads.
FFS…No. You mischaracterize what I say and then try to cover yourself by saying I you know I didn’t say it but then say I was really saying what you just said I didn’t really say. Or something like that. WTF. It’s like lefty logic. My point is that money dumped into political campaigns and think tanks, clowns like David Kahane ,etc., with the desire to shove ideas at people would be better spent laying a foundation in which such ideas would be more readily received. Prager University seems to be moving in that direction but I haven’t looked too much into it. Something I am looking to explore when I have more time.
As for Again, alas, no. Some people will, but probably not the majority. You must make the better decisions more appealing in more ways than just education. . Exactly how do you make “better decisions more appealing”? More laws, more think tanks on how to think more about thinking? Please, let me know ’cause I’m a little dense on how that happens without subsidies and other wastes of public funds. Forgive me if I mischaracterized..
A quibble but…
because they’re the only ones who can offer a good price on the asset. Thereby rendering the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Well, if a good price was offered on the asset, no one is richer nor anyone else poorer. An asset was converted into cash, which is itself an asset unless it is not converted into something else before inflation eats away at it. And of course the tax, which was what forced the sale in the first place. While I do not support this sort of extreme taxation of inheritance, and it’s a folly on the part of the government anyway in that as noted elsewhere the ways around it are numerous, in some cases the damage is worse when the money is left to children with massive guilt trips who go on to Hahvahd and Yale. They then turn around and use their inheritance to promote Marxism to assuage their guilt.
Also, I’m curious about these situations where the $20 million family farm must be sold to pay the taxes. Seems there should be other options in most cases like mortgaging enough to pay the tax. Something doesn’t seem to add up in some of these stories. Again, not saying it’s right, just questioning the problem solving skills of some people born into wealth.
Well, if a good price was offered on the asset, no one is richer nor anyone else poorer.
Actually, both are richer, by definition, as each as parted with something he valued less in exchange for something he valued more.
But therein, lies the rub in the context of sales of assets because of inheritance taxes. The sales are not arms-length, voluntary transactions but rather are occasioned by distress incurred by a government policy.
Regarding the $20 million family farm situation, there are precious few of those. Twenty million is major agri-corp territory. However, going back to the ’80s, pre-Reagan, there were many smaller farms, i.e. 200-600 acres which wound up being sold for taxes. Mortgages for the heirs weren’t feasible because the return on the land was not sufficient to pay the debt. Remember, these were the glory days of Jimmy Carter’s double-digit interest rates.
each as parted with something he valued less in exchange for something he valued more.
Yes, agree. Though assuming the selling party didn’t really want to sell (as you point out also) and the possibility that one or the other party has miscalculated. Generally each side in a transaction likes to believe they are getting a “deal” of some sort that will make up for the exchange. But given that the return is in the uncertain future…and yes it is possible (probable?) that both parties could well be better off for the exchange…well, this is all again a bit of a quibble. I confess to knee-jerk overreactions to certain popular economic “truisms” regarding rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Also, as you maybe can tell, work has slowed down for no damn good reason and I’m bored and a bit irritated…but I digress…
As for $20 mil, well I grabbed a big number out of my hat, admitting ignorance on these issues. Yes, I do recall back in the 80’s that this was definitely a problem. But there were resulting changes such that a certain amount is exempt…when I wrote that I thought it was $1 million but I now just looked up and it’s more like $5 million per individual today…assuming the first Google hit can be trusted. So there really shouldn’t be much of an issue today except for the very high net worth estate, which can afford the lawyers to work around the problem. It’s all make-work for lawyers at this point, I suppose. The bassturds.
Of course we’re talking in the context of the US. I have no idea what our cousins across the pond have to deal with. Well, aside from being too close to France.
@WTP,
I mentioned up thread that Reagan changed the tax code re: Estate & Gift Taxes when I was in law school. The exemptions have risen since then and the problem is much less acute now than it was thirty years ago. Until the 1985 Tax Code, the estate tax impacted virtually everyone. If I remember correctly, it started taking a cut at $60,000 and went up from there. Post Reagan and the subsequent increases in exemptions, the impact has significantly decreased. I can’t remember when I last had an estate tax return with a tax due.
The obvious explanation for this sentence is that your previous sentence of being in law school marks you as a lawyer. However, I find the other two explanations for filing multiple estate tax returns funnier:
*Have died multiple times, and risen from the grave
*Have killed off multiple relatives for the cash
I will now, using the impeccable journalistic standards of modern media, choose to believe that you are Dracula McUncledrowner.
@Spork
You forgot:
*Files fake estate tax returns as a hobby.
@R. Sherman Dracula McUncledrowner, Esq.
True. That merits an “Esq.”
And my point in return is that State redistributionism by force is where “money. . .would be better spent. . . .” eventually leads. I was correctly characterizing yours; my point wouldn’t exist without understanding it. For my point to make sense, I had to have done so.
Let me put it this way: whose money are you talking about? Anyone but yours? In which case, what is the advantage to these other people to let you decide where their money goes? Are you going to talk them into it? From what you yourself say about the reactions to your previous attempts, it seems less than likely.
As for Prager, I give you Brad Willcuck’s http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/19/the-divorce-revolution-has-bred-an-army-of-woman-haters/ .
I can see what direction Prager University is moving in, and I want none of it. Because of increasing general wealth, men are increasingly able to demand a rise in their compensation from their communities, and just as with women, likewise passing on getting involved in them without sufficient support and rewards. It doesn’t matter how good a wife and mother a 6+ woman might make if all the available communities on the other side of the marriage, or other social contracts, from both him and her, are all the equivalent of abusive, thieving, cheating, scrofulent butt-fugly triple-bagger 3s or lower.
Rather than increase their compensation to men, communities are choosing to double down on the shaming and blaming in order to make men lower their prices for their involvement, which only drives more and more men out of the system, to the point that it decreases their contribution overall. Men are increasingly able to refuse social contracts with the community equivalents of an ugly, fat, and abusive femelitists, and they’re doing it.
As to how to make better decisions more appealing, again, if you want the money redirected, you have to build a better mousetrap, or app, or otherwise innovate. You must outcompete the status quo. That is, after all, how we all got here ITFP. Build better mousetraps, better apps, and so on. The increasing disintermediation of medical health analysis is one example. Blockchain currency is another. Identifying and measuring the metrics needed for men to start rating their communities on a 1-10 scale, like women, for marriage and other social contracts is a third. I just came up with that simplification of the situation a couple of days ago. I’m not saying it’s The Killer App, but I hope you can agree that one usually has to try out a lot of new ideas and innovations just to find one or two that succeed well enough.
In short, just as with men and their communities, you must offer the people with the money you want redirected a better deal in exchange for it. And if that isn’t your mod-op, well. . .what have you got left besides State force? Which is why calls to redirect other people’s money eventually lead there.
You must outcompete the status quo to replace it. The only alternative, as far as we know, is State force.
Abi’s begging on the internet. Does she have to pay taxes on these “donations”?
https://www.patreon.com/AbiWilks
The only alternative, as far as we know, is State force.
Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish between parody and reality.
Geezer, I take it you read all of that? I only got as far as the end of the first paragraph. In the interest of human decency and compassion, since you have already subjected yourself to the sufferings (think of it like chicken pox…or small pox…well, any virus really), can you provide a brief summary? I’ll toss a few farthings into David’s tip box, so think of yourself doing it for the Guild if that will work for you.
Yes, I should have said violence in general, rather than State force in particular. On the evidence, though, WTP’s snide dismissal and nasty retorts elsewhere now appear to be more about reciprocation than martyrdom.
can you provide a brief summary?
Sorry, Brother, all I can provide is advice: Don’t feed it.
Apparently a job in British academia ain’t what it was.
(I must admit, though, I have trouble sympathising. Apparently being able to afford a mere “ex-council flat” in Edinburgh is an indignity that shouldn’t be suffered by a “Doctor of Musical Arts”. From Stanford, don’tcherknow.
Meanwhile, here I am, walking nine miles through the snow just to get to work.)
Apparently a job in British academia ain’t what it was.
Yes, back to academia for our poor put upon Doctor of Musicness, because I am guessing the horrid 55 hour week has much better hours, pay and perks than being an actual working musician, as I am also guessing he is not the second coming of Ellington.
Socialist compassion.
One of the ironies being that our Marxoid hustler, who claims to be opposed to “unearned” income, and to people leaving their loved ones parting gifts, also wants the state to confiscate even more of other people’s money, including their life’s savings, and then give it to strangers who most definitely didn’t earn it. “To each according to their need,” says she.
And a further update via Guido:
https://order-order.com/2017/07/27/abi-exempts-herself-from-100-inheritance-tax/
‘Give me your stuff.’
‘Mine doesn’t count.’
‘It’s never my fault.’
The three pillars of leftism.
‘Give me your stuff.’
‘How could we cope if capitalism failed?’
The answer may amuse.
Scientist, author and lefty Trump-hater Richard Dawkins gets no-platformed for ‘insulting islam’. Cue Alanis Morissette.
Huh? When has Dawkins ever called for someone to be “no-platformed”?
Folkwang University
Wait, did I get trolled?
“The answer may amuse.”
Bravely steal somebody else’s shit? Or, am I being unkind?
Dr. Toboggan’s academia link pretty much sums up what is wrong with our academic institutions and why it will be damn near impossible to fix them. The obtuseness is quite stunning. And there’s no fixing it because attempts to do so are dismissed as ignorance. The academic world to me very much resembles the church. You can’t criticize it, even for its own good. It so much reminds me of a discussion I had in my (slightly) more bellicose youth with the pastor from our church. Any attempt to get a point across causes the defense shields to go up. Accusations of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As if the baby isn’t sitting in filth and maybe someone should consider at least throwing out the bathwater. Consequently charlatans and sociopaths and child molesters and such are drawn to institutions that cannot be criticized. Nice safe haven for them to wreck havoc on the very institutions they are trying to defend.
Wait, did I get trolled?
No.
ICEM, eh ? Now is the time on Sprockets ven ve dance.
The answer may amuse.
“The purest equality possible.” I’m sure the air of religious hagiography is entirely coincidental.
Bravely steal somebody else’s shit?
Not unkind, just stating the facts.
Funny how the author firmly believes the factory, equipment, chemicals, offices with furniture, etc, all was just growing in the local fields, wild-like.
And note that the 26 ‘workers’ divvying up their chores for the day are producing nothing more complex than SOAP … something that can be made in one’s own kitchen.
Jeremiah 5:21
I think from each according to their ability to each according to their need is a good maxim,
says Abi, though I’m sure she’d admit it’s lacking a few verbs. Let’s remedy that:
Take from each according to their ability; give to each according to their need
Better, but that does make it clear that we’ve glossed over who’s doing the giving and taking. That would be the government of course; since in the Marxist view we’re all the government, I’ll go ahead and speak for it:
I’ll take from each according to their ability; I’ll give to each according to their need
That clarifies who’s doing what to whom, but there’s something fuzzy about all this “ability” and “need” business. Those will have to be determined for everyone, and who will do the determining – why, the government again. And since I’ve taken on that role already, here’s the final meaning underlying Marxism’s famous maxim:
I’ll take whatever I choose from everyone; I’ll give whatever I choose to anyone.
That’s what it means. That’s what it has always meant.
I’ll take whatever I choose from everyone;
See also the morally exalted Laurie Penny, who wishes to self-determine how much of other people’s earnings should be distributed her way.
See also the morally exalted Laurie Penny. . .
Every time you self-reference, you send me down a two hour rabbit hole of comments, further links, further self-reference ad infinitum. Damn you. Damn you to hell.
Every time you self-reference, you send me down a two hour rabbit hole of comments, further links, further self-reference ad infinitum.
And you’re just getting this now?
who wishes to self-determine how much of other people’s earnings should be distributed her way.
So – as she has neither the temperament nor aptitude for actual journalism, if this meant Miss Penny would stop writing it is a win for humanity, and as my self-determined needs are a fully restored AH-1S with all the fuel and maintenance needed so I can travel from my needed 1600 acre retreat to airshows on somebody elses’ dime, by George, I am for this anarcho-communist thing.
The barman should slide a small bowl of nuts down the bar to the first person to shout ‘parasite’ whenever Laurie Penny is mentioned.
I’ll take whatever I choose from everyone; I’ll give whatever I choose to anyone.
Or in other words: Need is an asset; ability is a liability.
Makes the perverse incentives more clear.
The barman should slide a small bowl of nuts down the bar to the first person to shout ‘parasite’ whenever Laurie Penny is mentioned.
Parasite! (for your mention)
Parasite! (for my quote above)
“…each according to…
In such a system it becomes advantageous to feign inability unless you want to be the one assigned all the work, leading to even more incompetence. Then again, widgets get designed and made much faster if you’re prodded with a gun barrel. I suppose.
More socialist spite from Abi Wilkinson:
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2017/07/no-time-civility-towards-republicans-even-john-mccain
More socialist spite from Abi Wilkinson:
Trying to find a factual statement in that mess is like trying to find a yeti in the Everglades.
Well, that would be because it, and damn near everything in that boilerplate leftist rant, is, e.g., “Repeatedly, people have been forced to phone their elected representatives and beg for their lives.”
It would be an easy day to fisk that mess line by line beginning with the obvious fact that health insurance does not equal health care, and no one is denied the latter, though one might just not be able to get it on someone else’s dime.