Generational Wealth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

In practice though this would really impact small and medium-sized businesses, not just “farms.” And if all buyers knew the owners were facing big estate tax bills, you wouldn’t even be able to sell them fairly. You can do planning but death is still unpredictable and at a minimum you will leave people with tough choices about using all the liquid assets to pay taxes to keep a business that could be in any kind of shape.

Depends on who you tax. If it's a $1 Billion business, I don't care what they call themselves (mom and pop or Big corp), they should pay up. At that level they should have the wealth and income to hire the right lawyers to prepare for this eventuality. Ownership at that level will be in stock anyways so they can just sell it in the open market.

No, not really. There isn’t generally a market for minority stakes in private businesses at anything close to their valuation. Having stock in a private company isn’t like having it in your investment account. It’s more like okay aunt Myrtle died and she owns 30% of the company. Her share is valued at $50m and she has $10m in other assets. You’re right about the lawyers and people will use trusts and family foundations and other maneuvers to make it work out unless it was a surprise but that kind of just defeats the point, doesn’t it?

Well, the Trust BS needs to be fixed as well. Overhaul is not changing tax rates, it's also fixing the loopholes. As to how Aunt Myrtle's descendants pay estate taxes, they'll have to sell their stake, maybe to employees or, better yet, use all those high paying lawyers to plan for her demise and begin liquidating stock over the years so there's enough set aside in cash to pay those darn taxes. Either way, we can't go on only cutting expenses and not increasing revenue. At some point that will break the camel's back the we won't like the results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

Woah woah woah, what happened to the wealthy paying their fair share y’all?

First---that income was fully taxed when earned. No reason it should be taxed again when we die.
We do pay our "fair share". When we earned $10M one year it was ALL taxable at the Fed and State level---a portion was LT Cap Gains rest was ST Cap Gains. No way to protect that. Same when we earn our typical $1M in a year---it's all income and there is no way to shelter it. We pay more in fed and state income taxes in a year than most people make in a year. Anything over ~400K is taxed at the 38% and top state bracket. So please don't talk about "fair share".

Finally, it is legal to establish trusts for protecting your wealth from being taxed a 2nd time at your death. As long as it's legal, why wouldn't you utilized that? I'm all for paying taxes the first time, but don't take my money a 2nd time just because I dropped dead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

DP
So much misinformation! Currently, unless you have more than 12.92M (in 2023) you don't pay estate tax. Most people don't pay estate tax in this country. That said, we did set up a trust, but not to avoid tax - to avoid probate. We own property in different states and if ownership doesn't change hands, then we don't go through probate, so we streamline the process. Most people don't need a trust either.

Not misinformation if you live in a state with "state estate taxes that start at a low level". Our state begins at $2M. And the fed estate tax will sunset to ~$5.5M in 2026--so don't use the $12.92M, use the 2026 number. So if you have $1-2 M in our state and expect it to grow over $2M, you need to put some protections in place. Or you could loose up to 20% of it to state in estate taxes. Also, We are well over those $12.92M per person numbers now, so it is essential to have protections in place. IMO, anyone near their state estate tax level and who has $3-4M now (which could grow to over $5.5M ) should consult a lawyer about estate planning. If you are 35-40 and already have $3-4M per person, you don't wait until it hits $5.5, just plan ahead

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

+1

Agreed that it is a Double tax. Most of us who are wealthy (in the 10-50M range) don't have ways to shelter the money as it came in. We paid taxes to fed and state on ALL of it (and PAID a ton of $$$ each year). It was income or LT/ST Cap Gains of stock options. That money is ours and it really is not fair to tax it again just because we die. So we will fully utilize all legal methods to ensure our kids don't pay 40-60% in estate taxes. Why wouldn't we?

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

DP
So much misinformation! Currently, unless you have more than 12.92M (in 2023) you don't pay estate tax. Most people don't pay estate tax in this country. That said, we did set up a trust, but not to avoid tax - to avoid probate. We own property in different states and if ownership doesn't change hands, then we don't go through probate, so we streamline the process. Most people don't need a trust either.

You missed the post the PP was responding to.

It was not about federal estate taxes, but DC estate taxes. They kick in at $4 million, and there is no portability between spouses.

Yes, they did not read. It's not DC, but another state with estate taxes, where it kicks in at $2M (so even worse). There are 12 states currently I believe with state estate taxes. Also the PP mentions the $12.92M but that is sunsetting in 2026 to ~$5.5M. So if your family net worth is over $10-11M (or will approach that by the time you die) it would behoove you to set up plans now to protect it. Congress could make that number even lower over time (or it could go back up). Not misinformation, just being aware of the many ways estate taxes could hit you. We had trusts in place when we were worth only $7-8M because we knew "the sunset could happen" and that most likely we would be worth way more when we hit 50-60 yo.

[Anonymous]

For generational wealth, I would think tens of millions at least.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For generational wealth, I would think tens of millions at least.

Agree, if a couple have the resources to exceed the lifetime exemption of around $13 million per person or $26 million combined I’d consider that to be the generational wealth threshold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

Woah woah woah, what happened to the wealthy paying their fair share y’all?

First---that income was fully taxed when earned. No reason it should be taxed again when we die.
We do pay our "fair share". When we earned $10M one year it was ALL taxable at the Fed and State level---a portion was LT Cap Gains rest was ST Cap Gains. No way to protect that. Same when we earn our typical $1M in a year---it's all income and there is no way to shelter it. We pay more in fed and state income taxes in a year than most people make in a year. Anything over ~400K is taxed at the 38% and top state bracket. So please don't talk about "fair share".

Finally, it is legal to establish trusts for protecting your wealth from being taxed a 2nd time at your death. As long as it's legal, why wouldn't you utilized that? I'm all for paying taxes the first time, but don't take my money a 2nd time just because I dropped dead.

I understand it’s legal. It’s also the kind of thing people who say “make the wealthy pay their fair share”, want to get rid of.

Sales and excise taxes are paid using money that was already taxed once, same with any sort of fees paid to a government.

Yes, You probably pay more in taxes every year than than multiple median-income-earning-Americans even make in one year. And you still end up with multiple times more than what someone earning the median income makes.

And yet inequality and the frustration and malaise it brews in our society is only getting worse and worse so there’s something wrong. Last time I checked it was.. more than 80% of stocks are owned/controlled by the top 10% of earners.

In my opinion there’s something wrong with that. And removing currently-legal “tricks” that help contribute to this insane concentration of wealth is something that needs to happen if we don’t want our society to collapse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

DP
So much misinformation! Currently, unless you have more than 12.92M (in 2023) you don't pay estate tax. Most people don't pay estate tax in this country. That said, we did set up a trust, but not to avoid tax - to avoid probate. We own property in different states and if ownership doesn't change hands, then we don't go through probate, so we streamline the process. Most people don't need a trust either.

Depends on what state you live in. Oregon has only a $1 million dollar state estate tax exemption. If you have $2 million dollars the state of Oregon would take taxes in the range of $100,000 to $150,000.

Also these taxes are always changing. You need an expert to do specifically what’s best for your family

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

+1

Agreed that it is a Double tax. Most of us who are wealthy (in the 10-50M range) don't have ways to shelter the money as it came in. We paid taxes to fed and state on ALL of it (and PAID a ton of $$$ each year). It was income or LT/ST Cap Gains of stock options. That money is ours and it really is not fair to tax it again just because we die. So we will fully utilize all legal methods to ensure our kids don't pay 40-60% in estate taxes. Why wouldn't we?

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.

So hard work + luck. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.



Anytime I see someone whining about how they work hard and no fair! You’re just jealous! I feel like screaming STFU. And again with the “we”. Our family and children benefit from generational wealth and we didn’t lift a finger. Plenty of people work a lot harder than you can even imagine without a word of complaint because they are men who are able to provide for their families a house, food, clothing, activities, all the necessities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.

Anytime I see someone whining about how they work hard and no fair! You’re just jealous! I feel like screaming STFU. And again with the “we”. Our family and children benefit from generational wealth and we didn’t lift a finger. Plenty of people work a lot harder than you can even imagine without a word of complaint because they are men who are able to provide for their families a house, food, clothing, activities, all the necessities.


I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with the whole “oh we’re men and we don’t complain cause we’re real men” part…

BUT I agree with the point this PP makes about “working hard”.

You really think you work SO much harder than a CNA wiping patients’ asses, working 16 hour shifts to be able to get a few hours counted as overtime? Or the customer service rep being berated and emotionally abused all day every day? The janitor cleaning up the messes kids make (sometimes on PURPOSE) at school?

I mean jesus, if you make 1 million dollars a year compared to these other jobs that ARE REQUIRED FOR OUR SOCIETY and who even at the peak of their career—will not earn six figures. Who deal with all of this stuff at their jobs and then have to worry about affording childcare, praying there’s no emergency because after rent, insurances, food, gas, car payment—would not even be able to afford a medical COPAY much-less a 10-30% COINSURANCE bill at the emergency room..


well jeeze. You must be working 48 hour days 7 days a week as something like a test subject for new torture methods because I can’t think of literally anything else that would justify that much of a disparity income to the rest of us peons who only work 8-16 hours a day but make up the backbone of our society.

Then here will come the “we made better choices”, “I vote for democrats who want to increase the safety net”, or “well blame your whoever you work for, for not taking care of you and being greedy!”

1. Sure,there are plenty who make bad choices. But quite literally a MAJORITY of the country is struggling and can not even afford an unexpected one time $500 emergency expense.
2. and 3. That’s nice, but you are literally either the business owner who is treating their employees awful, or the shareholder who expects greater and greater returns and increasing of profit and who actively lobbies congress (and in some cases literally help write the legislation) that helps people with wealth keep it concentrated and legally reduce tax burdens. Any increase of the social safety net to the levels we *should* have is going to require tax increases on the UMC and the UC, a long with the billionaires. Unless we want to lose the faith other countries have in the dollar and our status as a reverse currency.

I’m not one of those “woke AOC rainbows and just tax the rich and it will work out” socialists or social justice warriors. I know it’s more complicated than that and I abhor identity politics… but there is SERIOUSLY something wrong with our country at the moment. And this is not the 20th century anymore where one can just be accused of communism for saying this kind of stuff and be discredited and destroyed. More and more people are unhappy and aren’t wanting to take it anymore. Trump should be evidence of that honestly, I don’t know how much more a figurative middle finger one can give to the establishment and elite than voting him in.

Well, actually I do… if things don’t change I can guarantee you the next populist won’t be so easily swayed to help his fellow members of the UC. And they will actually end up being competent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.

Anytime I see someone whining about how they work hard and no fair! You’re just jealous! I feel like screaming STFU. And again with the “we”. Our family and children benefit from generational wealth and we didn’t lift a finger. Plenty of people work a lot harder than you can even imagine without a word of complaint because they are men who are able to provide for their families a house, food, clothing, activities, all the necessities.

I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with the whole “oh we’re men and we don’t complain cause we’re real men” part…

BUT I agree with the point this PP makes about “working hard”.

You really think you work SO much harder than a CNA wiping patients’ asses, working 16 hour shifts to be able to get a few hours counted as overtime? Or the customer service rep being berated and emotionally abused all day every day? The janitor cleaning up the messes kids make (sometimes on PURPOSE) at school?

I mean jesus, if you make 1 million dollars a year compared to these other jobs that ARE REQUIRED FOR OUR SOCIETY and who even at the peak of their career—will not earn six figures. Who deal with all of this stuff at their jobs and then have to worry about affording childcare, praying there’s no emergency because after rent, insurances, food, gas, car payment—would not even be able to afford a medical COPAY much-less a 10-30% COINSURANCE bill at the emergency room..


well jeeze. You must be working 48 hour days 7 days a week as something like a test subject for new torture methods because I can’t think of literally anything else that would justify that much of a disparity income to the rest of us peons who only work 8-16 hours a day but make up the backbone of our society.

Then here will come the “we made better choices”, “I vote for democrats who want to increase the safety net”, or “well blame your whoever you work for, for not taking care of you and being greedy!”

1. Sure,there are plenty who make bad choices. But quite literally a MAJORITY of the country is struggling and can not even afford an unexpected one time $500 emergency expense.
2. and 3. That’s nice, but you are literally either the business owner who is treating their employees awful, or the shareholder who expects greater and greater returns and increasing of profit and who actively lobbies congress (and in some cases literally help write the legislation) that helps people with wealth keep it concentrated and legally reduce tax burdens. Any increase of the social safety net to the levels we *should* have is going to require tax increases on the UMC and the UC, a long with the billionaires. Unless we want to lose the faith other countries have in the dollar and our status as a reverse currency.

I’m not one of those “woke AOC rainbows and just tax the rich and it will work out” socialists or social justice warriors. I know it’s more complicated than that and I abhor identity politics… but there is SERIOUSLY something wrong with our country at the moment. And this is not the 20th century anymore where one can just be accused of communism for saying this kind of stuff and be discredited and destroyed. More and more people are unhappy and aren’t wanting to take it anymore. Trump should be evidence of that honestly, I don’t know how much more a figurative middle finger one can give to the establishment and elite than voting him in.

Well, actually I do… if things don’t change I can guarantee you the next populist won’t be so easily swayed to help his fellow members of the UC. And they will actually end up being competent.

Can't be bothered to read most of your angry rant but irony is that the working class populists are following Turnip. Not AOC.

Tells you all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm rather agnostic on the topic of raising inheritance taxes on the very rich. Yes, it's easy to look at the top 1% and think, my god, they have so much money. But then I look at the bottom 20 or 30% of society and wonder why they deserve the wealth transfer? Because many if not most don't. A lot of people at the bottom of society are leeches who never produce anything useful for society and just feed off the welfare state.

In reality, inheritance tax is a red herring concept, a feel-good policy which never, ever, raises anywhere near the amount of revenue it theoretically promises as the wealthy find ways around it or simply stop producing more wealth. And the argument that it's a double tax, taxing incomes and wealth that has already been taxed at least once, is a valid one. And there's no question it involves class jealousy.

If you really want to increase tax revenues on a significant scale to fund all your pet programs, you have to raise taxes across the middle classes. Not just the wealthy.

+1

Agreed that it is a Double tax. Most of us who are wealthy (in the 10-50M range) don't have ways to shelter the money as it came in. We paid taxes to fed and state on ALL of it (and PAID a ton of $$$ each year). It was income or LT/ST Cap Gains of stock options. That money is ours and it really is not fair to tax it again just because we die. So we will fully utilize all legal methods to ensure our kids don't pay 40-60% in estate taxes. Why wouldn't we?

Also agree that most who say "tax it again" are simply jealous of those who have that much. We got there thru hard work---years of long hours and lower paying jobs at smaller companies in the hopes that the options pan out. Eventually they did---but that doesn't happen for everyone.

So hard work + luck. Got it.

luck is largely about taking risks. Willing to take lower salary in return for options in hopes those turn into something. Could have taken a "safer path" in tech and made double the salary during those 10 years and worked less hours. Instead we took the riskier path and it paid off.
Partner has been CEO at smaller company for over 12 years. Their salary has not changed once in those 12 years, except for the 2 years the company struggled and they chose to actually take a 35% pay cut for those years. 10 year and their salary has NOT increased at all. And nope, nobody knows about those pay cuts except the CFO/finance people who would see that. Instead they focus on getting pay increases and bonuses for the employees that deserve it. Not your typical CEO.

So yes, hard work, picking a career path and then a lifestyle that can be supported by your career path. If you only make $50-75K/year, you need to live on that, not $100K. THat's what we did when just starting out---live beneath our means, work our asses off to pay of major student loans and then save save save rather than upgrading our lifestyles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I did have a solution but I strongly believe the gap between the well off and the poor underlies much of what is going wrong in our society. I’m in favor of something like an inheritance tax. Something where you can leave a reasonable amount of money to each of your children but the rest goes to the government. That’s probably impractical but it might be a start. And by reasonable I mean $5 million or $10 million. Something indexed for inflation. But this idea of having huge amounts of money passed to the next next generation seems a little off to me.

I'm the PP at 14:25 who has studied tax policy in the context of wealth disparity. Like I said, I have never really found an answer. But the closest thing to a good answer was to drastically increase transfer taxes (inheritance and gift). I think it is the most palatable answer all around (if not the best one), but in the US extreme notions about property rights prevail, making this close to politically impossible.

What happens today in reality is that the really rich pay a lot to lawyers to get around estate taxes, so it falls mainly on the upper middle class instead.

I live in DC, which has a much lower estate tax threshold than the federal government, which, given the price of housing, is not all that hard to exceed.

I have been told I can go to a lawyer and set up trusts to avoid the tax, but why do I have to enrich lawyers by thousands because we naively bought in DC instead of VA (no estate taxes) decades ago?

And if I can do this, what is the point of the estate tax? It constitutes just 0.06% of the District's revenue. But it discourages residency by older, relatively well-off people who are willing to pay the high income tax and use very few city services, but don't want the District to diminish what goes to their heirs.

Up to you, but it will only cost $2-3K to set up the trusts to protect yourself from estate taxes from DC. We live in a state with low level for estate taxes and it would be downright foolish to not hire the lawyer to protect your assets. It's legal, and most people will protect themselves. if you have more than 1-2M in net worth you need to.
I'd rather pay the lawyer a few thousand and not have my kids loose 20% of the estate to our state and another 18-40% for federal. close to 60% of our estate would disappear. Seems worth a few thousand now to protect it legally

Woah woah woah, what happened to the wealthy paying their fair share y’all?

First---that income was fully taxed when earned. No reason it should be taxed again when we die.
We do pay our "fair share". When we earned $10M one year it was ALL taxable at the Fed and State level---a portion was LT Cap Gains rest was ST Cap Gains. No way to protect that. Same when we earn our typical $1M in a year---it's all income and there is no way to shelter it. We pay more in fed and state income taxes in a year than most people make in a year. Anything over ~400K is taxed at the 38% and top state bracket. So please don't talk about "fair share".

Finally, it is legal to establish trusts for protecting your wealth from being taxed a 2nd time at your death. As long as it's legal, why wouldn't you utilized that? I'm all for paying taxes the first time, but don't take my money a 2nd time just because I dropped dead.

I understand it’s legal. It’s also the kind of thing people who say “make the wealthy pay their fair share”, want to get rid of.

Sales and excise taxes are paid using money that was already taxed once, same with any sort of fees paid to a government.

Yes, You probably pay more in taxes every year than than multiple median-income-earning-Americans even make in one year. And you still end up with multiple times more than what someone earning the median income makes.

And yet inequality and the frustration and malaise it brews in our society is only getting worse and worse so there’s something wrong. Last time I checked it was.. more than 80% of stocks are owned/controlled by the top 10% of earners.

In my opinion there’s something wrong with that. And removing currently-legal “tricks” that help contribute to this insane concentration of wealth is something that needs to happen if we don’t want our society to collapse.

True, you earn money and pay taxes on it and then pay sales/excise taxes when you spend it. So, yes, taxed twice.

But with estate taxes, the money is triply taxed. Once when you earn the money, again when you die, and then again when your heirs spend it.