Friedman is right. What incentive would anyone have to accumulate wealth if it is taken by the govt at death? It's your property. You should be able to do with it what you want. Spend it. Bequeath The problem I see is that you have made a choice as to what you consider to be best for your situation. And I agree you should be able to make that choice. Why do you not what to grant me my choice if I choose to leave my wealth to my family? This is a common theme I see with liberal views (not necessarily directed at you, btw). They always think they know better how I should run my life. Recognize wealth for what it is. It's property you own. You should be able to do with it what you want.
Inheritance tax (all taxes really) should be flat percentage rate across the board. Whether you honestly earned a billion, or million is irrelevant.
Yep... And this answers the question raised by the OP when he openned the thread... And the answer is: Yes... Through the political, economical e historical ignorance of this "fairly large group of people" who support these type of ideas.
You're making two separate arguments here. The first is a "because I say so" argument that "it's your property, you should be able to with it what you want". That's an opinion, not an explanation or a justification. The handful of families that control almost all the wealth in El Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala and have for generations I'm sure have the same personal opinion, however morally and socially that opinion is unsupportable. If you're wealthy in the U.S. it's almost certainly because of the education system, the legal system, the infrastructure, the military, the fire and emergency services system, the internet/aerospace technology/medical technology... developed by federally funded labs....we could go on forever with what our socialized costs buy you which is what makes the U.S. different from the libertarian utopia of Somalia where indeed "It's your property" and you can do with it what you like. The problem I see is that you take from the socialized benefits but have the arrogance to think you achieved what you did solely by your own efforts, even though you most certainly wouldn't have achieved anything close to that if you'd been tossed into a Somalia like atmosphere from birth. When you refrain from taking advantage of anything paid for by socialized costs, you can make unfettered decisions about what to do with "your" money, until then you're being hypocritical at best and incredibly selfish at worst with any "it's all mine" argument. So the question becomes not if you'll pay into the socialized costs but the most efficient way to do so. It seems that it's both a bigger affront and a bigger disincentive to capitalism and production to tax me, an entrepreneur, while I'm alive and building companies, than to tax my estate when I die and the money would go to my children who did nothing to earn or deserve it other than an accident of birth. Do you disagree? On to Dr. Friedman's arguments, do you really think that Gates and Buffet and Zuckerberg and Page and Brin would have done anything different if the inheritance tax was 1% or 50% or 100%? Would Conrad or Richard Hilton have simply stopped building and running hotels if they knew their wealth couldn't be given to Paris to squander? In fact that's the funniest part of Freidman's argument, when asked in the above clip about what the harm was in a 100% estate tax he said "The harm in that is that where do you get the factories, where do you get the machines, where do you get the capital investment, where do you get the incentive to improve technology if what you are doing is to establish a society in which the incentive is for people, who if they have by accident accumulated some wealth, to waste it in frivolous entertainment?" Is anyone in their right mind going to make a credible argument that Paris Hilton is anything other than the embodiment of "frivolous entertainment" of which he warns? I will admit Dr. Friedman is the first person to actually address my question and to understand the difference between "because I say so" opinions and actual rational reasons. I think his logic may very well be rational up to an estate of a couple million dollars. Above that, the rational breaks down on several levels, both on the incentive level, which becomes bullshit, and because he ignores the very real detrimental impact on an economy from excessive concentration of wealth over time based on nothing more than accident of birth. Paris Hilton is exhibit one on the irrationality of claiming inheritances eliminates spending money of "frivolous entertainment" and instead directs it toward factories or capital investment!
I’m far from a political analyst, but it seems they have a weird way of equating sacrifice, hard work, and financial responsibility with greed.
It seems to me that you feel that anyone who is liberal is lazy, fiscally irresponsible, and incapable of sacrifice or is against hard work, fiscal responsibility, and sacrifice. That may make you feel good about yourself and make it easier to dismiss those who offer differing views. However it in no way reflects reality. I think I'm a good example, I feel like I sacrificed a bit and worked pretty damn hard in 20 years in the military. I've started 2 successful companies, hardly fiscally irresponsible? And I only present myself as a minor example. Silicon Valley is chock full of liberal folks who are responsible for much of our current economy and famously sacrifice by living in a garage and working 80 hour weeks while fiscally scraping together funds to start companies. While many in the military are conservative, there are plenty of liberal folks there as well, all of whom seemed to be sacrificing more than the vast majority of American conservatives who sit in their armchairs criticizing them lazy, fiscally irresponsible, incapable of sacrifice liberals. As you can imagine, it's frankly insulting when someone who's never served seems to think a whole group who have are "incapable of sacrifice" simply because they hold a different political view, as hopefully you're able to imagine. I'm not angry with you, simply asking you to stop caricaturing those who disagree with you politically as something that they just aren't. I and those like me don't believe that working hard, sacrifice, or fiscal responsibility are greed. At all! And our actions reflect that. We do believe that you got where you were in large part because of the socialized benefits our country brings you. We do believe that it is greed to think that you did it all on your own and that you shouldn't have to pay back into those socialized costs. That's a very different thing, as you can hopefully grasp?
They take the moral high ground (which they identified) and before you know it, opposing political parties are outlawed as dangerously amoral and there you go, you've got a one-party state like Cuba. In practice, a socialist ruling party has no moral alternative to banning competing political ideologies.
Dude, @digitalnomad just advocated capital punishment for anyone asking for the moral justification behind inheritance laws, and I didn't hear you or anyone else questioning that. That sounds like exactly the kind of dictatorial behavior you're claiming people of my ilk are guilty of, in fact even worse. Can you point to where I or anyone like me have advocated for anything like that, in thousands of posts? Or just look back 5 posts here to see what you're side's advocating? Hypocrisy much?