Occupy Wall Street's statement

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OK allow me to explain. If you have an estate that is valued at 4 million dollars. You currently do not have a taxable estate and could pass down all of it to the next generation tax free. Now in this case it may make sense to put a sizeable chunk of that money into a dynasty trust for it is conceivably possible the 4 million could grow to 20 million over the life of your heirs and this would be a great way for your heir's estates to not have to pay the estate taxes on this money.

However, if you are really rich for instance a billionaire, then removing the 5 million from your estate isn't anywheres near as effective as the remaining 995 million is subject to the estate tax and your estate will pay a buttload of taxes on it.

To me this is just another example of the left playing "class warfare" political games. It is really easy to pander to people without a taxable estate that the people with taxable estates should pay more. It is basically a double tax on everyone as you first paid income taxes when you made the money and then you are taxed on it again when you leave it to your heirs. How if a parent dies with 100 million and 5 kids each kid only gets 13 million is fair I don't understand. Why should it be government policy to destroy family wealth?

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I know he is only a comedian, but I think he really hits it out of the park in this rant.

 

Wow, a man thinking the younger generation is no good, and a generally successful guy thinking that the people who don't make more than him are lazy bums? Stop the presses! I really liked the tie-in with terrorists. Yeah, of course they are just like the people who killed so many Americans in 2001, in fact, it's probably just a matter of time before the lynchings, assassinations, mass murders and civil war happens. Woe is us, when will the rich guy ever have the power?

I have to say this, though - most of the images I've seen of flashy guys with limos, a few hot chicks inside and blowing money around like there is no tomorrow aren't exactly of hard-working guys that earned every dollar. Rather, I'd say these people made it big as overpaid celebrities, athletes, criminals, or what have you; in the best case they are financial speculators who took a big risk and it paid off. Hey, a lot of young people DO emulate those guys and DO want to be like them - making a ton and living la vida loca with as little work as possible. And for that matter, doesn't that guy's idea of there being a lot less envy when he was a kid tie in with the fact there was a lot less income inequality back then? Personally, I don't mind someone earning a million a year with hard work. However, I don't necessarily feel the same way about the likes of celebrities, sports or otherwise, who got catapulted into fortune and can't seem to go a year without making a scandal or making it to the courtroom, or the great players at the stock market.

Speaking of which, remember why it was called Occupy Wall Street? The earliest and arguably still main issue was with the priviledged treatment given to the big financial companies that were instrumental in ******* it up for everyone else back in 2008/9. They got their TARP (otherwise things would get WAY worse, everyone said at the time - and might have been right), with pretty good conditions, and most eventually rebounded - a way better deal than everyone else, in the US and beyond, would get. In short, they messed up, we all paid for their mistake, now it's not their fault - no, really, it's everyone else's. Oh, and speaking of the TARP, did you guys notice this bit about the much more that wasn't discussed? It doesn't take a communist to have an issue with that, I think.

As for the protesters being considered only spoiled kids, I'm trying to find a study on the OWS demographics. So far this is the best I've found. Of course, being a student and not having a full-time job do allow you more time for something like that, but there doesn't seem to be nearly as many of them as some people think - or would like to complain about.

 

This is exactly right. Repped. More OWS demographic info here.

 

"Only"?

(I'm not really arguing with you , Snook, but I suspect that damedog and people of like mind feel that $13 million is a buttload of money being passed on to people who may have done nothing to earn it other than to have the good fortune to have been born into a family with wealthy parent, and so paying taxes on it isn't all that objectionable.)

 

Gaear- If you will only accept the things I say if I am a credentialed expert, than by all means go right ahead. I can't change your mind on what you think is valid or not. If you ever decide to give what I say a look however, you will realize that I for the most part had what it was factually right, and it doesn't look like Snook, the expert, is disagreeing with what I claimed it actually does, just the rightness of it. The dynasty trust leaves a massive amount of wealth safe from multiple estate taxes for hundreds or thousands of years, and that money is able to continually grow and grow for generations who did nothing to earn it. The generation skipping tax was meant to try and stop these things, and the dynasty trust is just another loophole used exclusively by the rich.

So essentially a billionaires estate will still be taxed whatever is over 5 million? Fair enough, but that is still ignoring the tax-free, nearly perpetual wealth generator that still remains within that 5 million. Really Snook, I don't understand how you can dislike welfare and say they are leeches on society and yet fervently defend the massive welfare that the people who were lucky enough to be born rich can get. You say it is class warfare, but I think it's pretty obvious who wages it and who is on the winning side of it.

Almost forgot, I don't want to seem like I am putting words in your mouth since we didn't discuss welfare on here, I got your opinion on it by looking at the "Micheal Moore says money of the rich isn't theirs" thread.

 

Remember that perpetual wealth generator is only estate tax free it is not income tax free.

Now as to why this is class warfare. It is very simple. It is a drop in the bucket. Per the IRS the estate taxes make up such a small percentage of the federal revenue that they get lumped in miscellaneous. For 2010 that lump was only 6%. Now if you factor in that legacy trusts only shield a relatively small amount of the estate of wealthy people you can see that if they were done away with it would have a dramatic impact on the families of some people (in a negative way), but would have little impact on the nation as a whole. The entire point about bringing them up gets me back to the Carolla video. It is all about envy.

The entire concept of estate taxes is wrong. How a person who is not driven by envy can feel that the death of a loved one should trigger someone to lose 35% of their assets astounds me. If this was a fair tax and hit everyone it would be abolished in a New York minute.

As an aside the tax foundation (via the IRS) just released the summary of 2009 tax data. In 2009 that famous 1% who are by defiition evil and screwing everyone over paid 36.7% of the total income taxes. The top 5% paid 58.7% and the top 10% paid 70.5% of the total taxes. The break point which put you in the top 10% was families that made in excess of $112,124.

/begin sarcasm alert

Clearly everyone in the top ten percent should be put in prison as they aren't carrying their share of the burden. How dare they only carry 70.5% of the burden. How can that possibly be their fair share. I'm getting a tent and heading to New York. Whose with me?

/end sarcasm alert

 

I'm not driven by envy at all. I wouldn't really have any use for a ton of wealth, save for using a fraction of it to achieve some level of stability. I'm driven more by a sense of fairness. This isn't really about income taxes so much as the fact that it keeps wealthy families perpetually wealthy merely because they were lucky enough to have a rich great grandfather or great great grandfather or whatever. It really does create an aristocracy of rich families. Becoming rich and creating one of these insures that generation after generation after you does not have to work to achieve their own wealth and instead could live off the growing benefits of your assets.

 

I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or not, but I wouldn't say all their assets. Just actually paying the normal estate taxes when you have boatloads of wealth would be enough for me. They still help future generations, even a million to each heir is an enormous sum and obviously they can inherit much more than that. No estate taxes could very easily mean much lower social mobility than we have now and a class society where the classes are almost decided by birthright. 10% of people own 80% of the countries wealth and if they can continually pass all of it down with impunity than those who aren't born into money are pretty much s*** out of luck.

 

I'm a simple man. Do I get frustrated when "the rich get rcher, and the poor die young"? Of course I do. Is the proper way to deal with this problem to act like a total douchebag, hassle the middle class, break the law, and make imbecilic demands that anyone with a first grade education knows will never happen in a million years? No.

I sympathize with their frustration, but their actions do not get anything from me other than contempt.

 

So I guess that decides it. Everyone is allowed to accumulate enough wealth that would be enough for damedog. If you accumulate more than that you have an ethical responsibility to turn it over to the government so our ruling elite can decide what to do with it.

I don't think there is an actual relationship between how rich someone else is and how rich you can become. Growing up my family was in the top 50%. My family is now in the top 10% and I'm hoping to climb into the top 5% before I'm done. Of course I've worked incredibly hard since I was in high school and continue to do so.

Personal responsibility and drive is what it takes to be successful, not stealing other peoples hard earned money.

 

No, but it sure affects the odds. There are more than enough of research to conclude that social class is in most cases inheritable. Factors such as government subsidized higher education also increase class mobility a great bit. Rather interestingly according to a research paper I read a while back the class mobility upwards in the Uniteds States has declined greatly in the last decade or so and is even lagging behind many European countries. The American Dream might be attainable but it's becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

Personally me being hugely anti aristocracy I'd rather see success earned than passed on by inheritance and therefore fully support taxation that slowly dwindles down the family wealth unless it's managed properly to spur further growth. Income inequality in general is not necessarily a bad thing (in Finnish history it was at its lowest during the war and the 90'ies depression) but in excess it could create real "class warfare". As in revolutionary masses shooting your brains out when they starve and lack access to education or medicine.

 

Nice call.

But all those people who say it's not fair that rich families stay rich and poor families can't get richer are just playing the victim. My parents barely earned the minimum wage, but I've managed to work hard to get to a position where I earn more myself than the two of them combined. Being poor didn't hold me back and I didn't go on a lazy protest march to whine about it. I wouldn't hire any of those whiny protesters in a million years. Give me a student with a can do attitude any day, and they've got a much better chance of being successful.

 

What would you suggest they do about it then? Protests have traditionally been the engine for positive change in the U.S, and the law has almost never sided with them at first. What do you think will never happen? I think some of the things they are asking for, like free education, is ludicrous and takes things too far, but there are many things protests have accomplished that really changed the entire society for the better.

Lazy protest march? Whiny protesters? I think continuing to hold their ground after many cases of violence inflicted upon them, staying in camps when they could be at home sitting on the couch, takes them out of the realm of lazy. 13% of them make over 75,000 a year and the average age is 33 according to a survey done, this isn't just a bunch of lazy kids and stereotyping them like that is just a way of ignoring the issues they talk about.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Care to explain?

Here's what I think about this personal responsibility thing. It's right to a point to believe that those who work hard get ahead (unless you're already rich than you don't need to) but it's wrong to believe that this is the only factor. We've lost over 2 million jobs in 2009, and over 100,000 this October alone according to the Mass Layoff Statistics from the Bureau of Labor. When you have a system in place that is making it harder and harder to find a decent living no matter how hard you work to obtain it, sometimes it is not the fault of the individual but the system they are operating under.

 

I had thought that we were arguing about a bunch of "spoiled rich kids." Which is it? Make up your minds already, so the rest of us can understand what your points are regarding the rich, the poor and OWS.

 

Hang on, is it rich people complaining that they are too rich? This must be the most confusing protest ever.

 

There have been a few who have expressed a similar viewpoint (or rather, that the current system is too slanted in their favor) - Warren Buffett was the most famous example. The vast majority of protesters are poor or middle-class - if you can consider 150k per year to be the around the upper limit of the middle class, 98% make up to this amount.

In my (if limited) experience, the guy who doesn't speak up is seldom the one with the most "can-do" attitude. Do note that many of those people are employed - they are attending the protests in their free time.

 

How do estate taxes (assuming that's what we're still talking about) constitute "stealing other peoples hard earned money"? Estates go to people who didn't earn it **, so it's not beeing "stolen" from them. And since "you can't take it with you", the dead person can't do anything with it, so it isn't being "stolen" from them.

**Assuming they didn't actually contribute to the wealth accumulation, because if they did, they presumably would have (or at least should have) been compensated for it at the time.

 

The person who died with the estate earned the money, paid income taxes on the earnings, and they selected to whom it should go to. I guess if you want to write the IRS into your will you have that right, but I know most people would rather the money go to their heirs.