|
Gilding Posterity
The Case for Long-term Tax Relief
The first question that needs to be asked in any serious tax debate is who really needs money more, rich people or poor people? And any right thinking person would have to agree that rich people need money more. After all, anyone with common sense, or children to feed, knows it doesn’t take very much money to be poor.
But being rich is very expensive. At least it is if you’re going to do it right. You have the yachts, you have the limos, you have the mansions to keep up. Nor are country club memberships cheap. Then there are diamonds for the wife, and diamonds for the mistress. (Or, perhaps, a diamond earring for that certain Giorgio.) Lawyers, accountants, private school tuition, bail for your children, and Christmas bonuses to the pilots of your private planes: regardless how much money you’re raking in from governmental contracts or billing from Medicaid, the cost of these necessities keeps adding up. And we haven’t yet mentioned the money needed for campaign contributions to candidates who promise they’ll reduce your taxes so that you will have even more money to donate to candidates who will promise to reduce your taxes.
Karl Marx said it best, “To each according to his needs.” And quite simply the rich have greater needs. And don’t forget that on top of sustaining their individual life styles the rich are also charged with carrying the ambitions of the entire society on their back. For if wealth did not exist, to what would the rest of us aspire? No, being that wealth is the true North of all our compasses, the wealthy must be regarded as the brave explorers who are leading us where we all want to go. And, therefore, it is our obligation as citizens to subsidize their efforts to colonize the Land of Plenty, so that one day we may all live there duty free.
Now, having established the moral basis for reducing the tax burden of the wealthy, there are also pragmatic economic reasons for pursuing such a policy. As you know, the government's budgets are currently in shortfall. While it would be a mistake to think of these shortfalls as deficits – deficits, after all, are when the government, out of desperation, spends more money than it has, as opposed to the present Administration’s fundamentally much more optimistic policy of simply giving away more money than it has (a policy of pre-distributed surpluses rather than true deficits) –one must concede that the government will one day be forced to sell more bonds at inflated rates of interest to cover these shortfalls. But, here again, conservative economic policy displays its prescience. For unlike liberal governments which simply run red ink for red ink’s sake, conservative governments, displaying great economic foresight, dare to run red white, and blue ink, knowing that the same fierce sense of patriotism that inspires the wealthy to selflessly pierce the lapels of $5,000 suits with flag pins, will motivate them, if given the money now, to buy those high yielding bonds, when the government needs investors in the future. Again, we demonstrate how, by providing for the wealthy, we best provide for the future of America.
Which brings us to the Death Tax. Recently, it has come to my attention that certain folks out there are attempting to reposition the Death Tax as some kind of Patriot’s Appreciation Tax. The illiberal logic is something like this: it's the infrastructure of America, as paid for by generations of Americans before them that has created the fertile field in which present day Americans grow their wealth. Because the wealthy have been given great opportunities, paid for by others, they should look at the great wealth they have created as nothing more than the lucky bankings of a grand monopoly game. And therefore, to give others the chance to play the same game, the winners should gladly give a large portion of their winnings back to America to reinvest in the same infrastructures that enabled them to create their own wealth.
Such is the power of sophistry that for a moment one is tempted to subscribe to such a fabulous notion as patriotic altruism. Until one realizes how inherently un-American is the very concept of altruism in the public sphere. Remember, the Founding Fathers did not establish the first government in the world; they established the first self-government. And it is no coincidence that in such a formulation the Self comes before the government. Listen, in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people are the government. Therefore in self-government the needs of the self must always come before the needs of the people. Any rich person could tell you this. Otherwise, there would be absolutely no moral basis for tolerating the inequalities in the social system.
And if we have any doubt that this “expectation of gratitude” in the wealthy is nothing more than a very sophisticated expression of envy, those doubts are dispelled when we realize that one of the most passionate advocates of positioning the Death Tax as a Patriot’s Appreciation Tax turns out to be the father of the very man who put the Bill in Billionaire.
Thanks Grandpa.
As if Senior is the one who is going to be doing the inheriting when Junior’s own window, “version three score and ten” is finally closed. Even though, by that time he’ll be so rich he’ll probably already have his name on Heaven’s Gates.
No, that the Inheritance Tax is nothing more than a discriminatory Death Tax becomes very clear when one considers the simple fact that it prevents the rich from burying all their wealth with them. But it’s their money, and who is the government to say they can’t take it with them? In fact, I feel so strongly about this point that I would lift my objection to any Patriot’s Appreciation Tax, as long as all the wealth that went into the ground with the deceased was exempted from taxation. Then, if people were misguided enough to leave their money to the living, well, the government might have a moral basis for reabsorbing a portion of their estates. In such a case, a refusal to inter might rightly be regarded as a de facto quit claim; an admission by the dead that they really don’t need the money anymore.
But given a tax incentive to inter, I am sure most wealthy Americans would gladly bury all their accumulations with them. For, upon consideration, it would occur to them that nothing would speak about the greatness of America to the people of the future more than how much wealth its citizens could afford to bury with them in the past.
Yes, the model is Egypt. And weren’t the Pharaohs wise to see how much glory a national policy of Asset Internment would bring to their civilization in the distant future. I mean, without the pyramids all we would know of Egypt is that the people never had to go hungry for all the sand which is there. But because the rulers didn’t worry about the needs of the living, they insured themselves, and their civilization, the bright luminance of a gilded posterity.
So, it can be with America. So what if our society doesn’t have enough money to educate a child today. If in 2,000 years a child has learned from our burial vaults what a great people we were, what great possessions we had, we have not only educated a child (and probably a child from our own class) but have educated the entire Future to the essence of American wealth.
And that, as I said before, is the purpose of wealth: to maintain itself in such a fashion that inspires us all to be wealthy. So to all wealthy Americans, I plea: if you truly want the glory of America to live forever, then urge your personal lobbyist to pass the appropriate tax legislation that will enable you to bury all your wealth with you. For having had everything in this life, it is vitally important that you let the Future know that in America, the people were every bit the equal of the ancient Egyptians, and the rich as free, and as foresightful, as the wise and mighty Pharos.
And may God Bless America. As he has blessed the memory of the Land of Cleopatra and the legend of her truly magnificent Tuts.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
