U.S. House passes estate tax repeal

originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: Indigo5

I'm for less taxes.

Even if I don't readily benefit from it.

You're right in that regard.

I think that taxes, all taxes should be frozen until a full accountability is held with government spending.

I guess that makes me the bad guy.

S'okay. I'll accept that.

You keep fighting for bigger government.

I'll be fighting against it.

How silly is that argument?

I am for smaller government and I am for less taxes?

What makes us (and the politics we sympathize with) different is WHO is in need of tax relief and WHERE the associated spending is cut.

At 25% Defense Spending is tied with Medicaid spending as the two largest chunks of your tax bill.

Easy-Peasy GOP...let's break out the red pen and CUT!

WASHINGTON — House Republicans beat back protests from fiscal hawks and narrowly passed a budget that increases war spending but slashes domestic programs and begins to privatize Medicare with a goal of balancing the federal books in nine years.

In an unusual move, House leaders put two Republican budgets to a vote, one that included $94 billion in off-budget war spending, $20 billion of which was supposed to be offset by cuts elsewhere, the other with $96 billion in war spending and no corresponding cuts.

WOW...They actually gave Defense MORE than was requested! and broke their own "balanced budget" rules to do it?

So save the "Smaller Gov." BS....

Where DID they cut?

The budget would turn Medicaid into block grants to the states, cutting health care spending for the poor by $900 billion. The food stamp program would also be turned into block grants and cut by hundreds of billions of dollars. Special education, Pell Grants, job training and housing assistance would all be cut.

www.nytimes.com...

Give the Military Industrial Complex more of your tax dollars than they even asked for!

And eff the old people...and Pell grants for poor kids wanting to go to college..and special education..

Just saying...You should OWN what your party stands for and stop trying to pretend it is something else.

a reply to: Aazadan

I've yet to find a definition of "smarter government" that everyone can agree upon.

Personally, I think "smarter government" is akin to "jumbo shrimp", or "military intelligence".

originally posted by: Indigo5


Give the Military Industrial Complex more of your tax dollars than they even asked for!

And eff the old people...and Pell grants for poor kids wanting to go to college..and special education..

Just saying...You should OWN what your party stands for and stop trying to pretend it is something else.

You're right.

In addition to kicking out every damned democrat, kick out every damned republican.

You won't get an argument from me and I won't defend the mouth-breathing progressive morons in the senate.

Kick them all out.

Republicans suck just as much as democrats. Because republicans (in addition to being liars like the democrats) are cowards because they say they are for smaller government.

So republicans actually suck worse.

They all want higher taxes, they all want bigger spending, they all want assinine policies, they all want huge bloated government agencies and programs.

And they all are a bunch of lying stains on the underwear of society.

originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: Aazadan

I've yet to find a definition of "smarter government" that everyone can agree upon.

Personally, I think "smarter government" is akin to "jumbo shrimp", or "military intelligence".

How about someone who wants to run programs competently, isn't afraid to spend when spending is needed, but is also willing to cut where it isn't needed. And then is responsible enough to actually fund those spending levels, whatever they may be even if it means increasing taxes.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: Aazadan

I've yet to find a definition of "smarter government" that everyone can agree upon.

Personally, I think "smarter government" is akin to "jumbo shrimp", or "military intelligence".

How about someone who wants to run programs competently, isn't afraid to spend when spending is needed, but is also willing to cut where it isn't needed. And then is responsible enough to actually fund those spending levels, whatever they may be even if it means increasing taxes.

If there was honest accountability, then I couldn't argue against that.

I wanted to add a bit to the discussion; Why are Republicans trying to repeal the estate tax? It’s their nature.

Specifically about 'family farms':

You’ll notice that when Republicans talk about this, they always posit a hypothetical family farm being sold off and not “My constituents the Millers had to sell off their farm,” because the Millers are the equivalent of a unicorn. According to the Department of Agriculture, in 2013 only .6 percent — or 1 in 167 — of the estates of farmers who died owed any estate tax at all.

So...statistically, 99.4% of family farms are safe.

a reply to: links234

A guy I often converse with online runs a family farm. It has been in his family for a few decades now and he inherited it about 10 years ago. At the time he got it, it was worth several million dollars. The estate tax never applied to him, but what he said did apply to him (and this is common with most farms apparently) is that the farm is left to several different people who each see their portion as being worth $x million. But the farm itself doesn't create that much money per year relative to it's worth, it's mostly land value. So each member will sell off their portion of the farm, and if one person wants to keep it all together so that it's still functional it involves taking on massive amounts of debt. That debt is what puts most inherited farms out of business, not an estate tax.

The rich never paid this tax anyway.

That it what corporations and living trusts are for.

Even Bill and Hillery Clinton have all there money safeguarded in living trust for the family.

She makes a big thing about taxing the 1% but its all BS that she can pass do nothing bills with loopholes that do nothing to really tax the rich while the poor and middle class sheepl believe and vote thinking they are taking money from the rich.

the democrats have been pushing these do nothing ideas for years to buy votes from the poor and all we have from them is more poor.

a reply to: intrepid

I hate it when the gov't caters to the wealthy at the detriment of the lower classes.

I hate it when people hire the maphia to rob their neighbors and give the spoils to the poor under their name so they can pretend to be moral.

I also hate it when people think they are entitled to other people's property.

Both sides here make me chuckle. The effects of the Estate tax on the wealthy don't occur with proper Estate Planning. Even back in the good Ole Days when the Estate threshold was much lower, you could avoid having the Estate Tax end up taking a penny of your actual Estate with the proper planning. The only people affected by the Estate Tax are the very rich who are also very financially stupid. That subset of the rich is VERY small. The ones who get hurt by the Estate Tax are only those who have failed to plan. I suppose some here will argue that legally avoiding the effects of the Estate Tax with proper planning is somehow morally wrong.

originally posted by: pavil
Both sides here make me chuckle. The effects of the Estate tax on the wealthy don't occur with proper Estate Planning. Even back in the good Ole Days when the Estate threshold was much lower, you could avoid having the Estate Tax end up taking a penny of your actual Estate with the proper planning. The only people affected by the Estate Tax are the very rich who are also very financially stupid. That subset of the rich is VERY small. The ones who get hurt by the Estate Tax are only those who have failed to plan. I suppose some here will argue that legally avoiding the effects of the Estate Tax with proper planning is somehow morally wrong.

A friend of mine has a lot of family money. His dad is in his 60's and is trying to set his kids up now and doing it slowly so the IRS doesn't get involved, so over time he has been selling his assets to his children at steep discounts in order to get around the tax.

originally posted by: beezzer
the 2016 budget for DHS is almost 65 Billion dollars.

I guess everyone here would rather have the DHS and tax people more rather than give the government less.

It's neither one or the other.

How about this cut DHS and stop spending a cool Trillion on endless war
and ending poverty and homelessness with billions left over
to knock down the debt or (heaven forbid) reinvest in infrastructure creating millions of tax paying jobs, again allowing to the development of surpluses.

a reply to: FyreByrd

If government actually did that rather than just form a damned committee to see how the expenditure would affect the California Farting Beetle, I'd get behind it.

Again, our framing fathers (who read Adam Smith and agreed with HIS points on this issue):

From the Economist:

www.economist.com...

If there was one thing the Revolutionary generation agreed on — and those guys who dress up like them at Tea Party conventions most definitely do not — it was the incompatibility of democracy and inherited wealth.

With Thomas Jefferson taking the lead in the Virginia legislature in 1777, every Revolutionary state government abolished the laws of primogeniture and entail that had served to perpetuate the concentration of inherited property.

Jefferson cited Adam Smith, the hero of free market capitalists everywhere, as the source of his conviction that (as Smith wrote, and Jefferson closely echoed in his own words), "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."

The states left no doubt that in taking this step they were giving expression to a basic and widely shared philosophical belief that equality of citizenship was impossible in a nation where inequality of wealth remained the rule.

North Carolina's 1784 statute explained that by keeping large estates together for succeeding generations, the old system had served "only to raise the wealth and importance of particular families and individuals, giving them an unequal and undue influence in a republic" and promoting "contention and injustice."

Abolishing aristocratic forms of inheritance would by contrast "tend to promote that equality of property which is of the spirit and principle of a genuine republic."

Others wanted to go much further; Thomas Paine, like Smith and Jefferson, made much of the idea that landed property itself was an affront to the natural right of each generation to the usufruct of the earth, and proposed a "ground rent" — in fact an inheritance tax — on property at the time it is conveyed at death, with the money so collected to be distributed to all citizens at age 21, "as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property ."

The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. Noah Webster


The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. Adam Smith

www.dailykos.com...

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you and may posterity forget that ye were once our countrymen.
– Samuel Adams

and just because we should all study this one:

There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.
– Mahatma Gandhi

Both of the above from:

www.quotes.net...

a reply to: FyreByrd


I had to add this one:

Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.
– Abraham Lincoln

Also from:

www.quotes.net...

originally posted by: FyreByrdIt's neither one or the other.

How about this cut DHS and stop spending a cool Trillion on endless war
and ending poverty and homelessness with billions left over
to knock down the debt or (heaven forbid) reinvest in infrastructure creating millions of tax paying jobs, again allowing to the development of surpluses.

How about this? We start by removing every tax in the US. Next we tariff every good sold in the US unless it and it's raw materials are manufactured atleast 50% within the US so that it becomes cheaper to produce here than to import. Next, we make it a law that US companies can only be placed on US stock exchanges. Other nations are welcome to join us, but for a US corporation it is required if you issue stock. Last, there is a 1% transaction charge for every Wall Street (and other US stock exchange) transactions.

This would currently bring in 16 trillion per year. If taxing it drops the income it would be closer to 8 trillion. We use this money to fund the government. Any surplus goes towards paying down National Debt that we owe ourselves (don't wipe out foreign held debt). At the current levels, this would take approximately 9 years to pay things down assuming a 6 trillion federal budget, a generous increase+2 trillion surplus. It would also free the middle class from being overtaxed. Instead the burden of taxation would be placed on those who created the previous financial crisis, and are in the process of creating the next one. The more involved you are in the market, the more you pay.

There's other ways to do this that spread the punishment around a little. But this would do a lot to make the whole country more solvent. At the expense of a few bankers profits.

originally posted by: beezzer
a reply to: Krazysh0t

Like I said, defend funding a bloated government that shows no sign of shrinking.

Defend higher taxes.

You can spin it however you want, but we both know at the end of the day, this bill won't shrink the government in any conceivable way. It's just a break on the wealthy.

It's your right. You are free to do so.

ANd as long as I am free to do so, I will argue against a draconian, bloated government that has no accountability, has government agencies like TSA, DHS, has policies like NDAA. I will fight against these things.

You are free to support them as you wish.

You know, just because I may defend one policy of government doesn't implicitly imply that I will defend ALL government programs. I don't support the TSA, the NDAA, the PATRIOT Act, you should KNOW I don't support the war on drugs and therefore the DEA.

I just know the difference between reality and politics. Anyone who thinks repealing this tax will shrink government is fooling themselves while the wealthy laugh at you all the way to the bank.

The people crying foul over this will never start a small business.
They will never put in a hard day's work on a family farm.
They will never attempt to save anything up to pass on to their children.
But they will happily accept taxpayer funded assistance.

originally posted by: OpenMindedRealist
The people crying foul over this will never start a small business.
They will never put in a hard day's work on a family farm.
They will never attempt to save anything up to pass on to their children.
But they will happily accept taxpayer funded assistance.

Meanwhile, most of the people supporting this don't make enough to even see the benefit of the repeal.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Au contraire. I see the benefit, despite having no children and a net worth below a million dollars.

The benefit I see is a more just (or slightly less unjust) tax code.