Tax discussion thread (U.S. focused)

[Final-Fan]

Kasz216 said:
1) I mean, you are stretching the terms of practical use to include things that aren't practical use.  As such second generation practical use (and beyond) are actually more practical.

2) Less beneficial?  No it would make the cutoff extremely low though.  Which is the point.  In the tax system we are discussing most stuff that actually counts as "practical use" is provided.  Which instead of having  a progressive tax system it seems to make more sense to give tax credits for "pratical use" items.  This is more effective as it prevents abuse.  (People instead of buying a car spending their money on non practical use items like any rich person would.)

3)  In your opinion it is compeltely useless to the current owner.  The current owner may have a different opinion however.  After all why would he keep money around that is completly useless to him?   Look at Bill Gates for example.  Super wealthy... is his money really useless to him?  He gives a lot to charities... has his own charity fund.  Isn't this usefull to him?  That he can direct his money to the charities which he thinks are most important and most vital?  Even if someone dies rich... and leaves his money to his family.  Is that really a useless act?

The Dog in the Manger refrence is completly irrelvant as the entire point is the cattle starve and the dog staves.  In this case we've already established nobody would starve.  Furthermore.  Such a thing would seem to once again not even be related to income... but wealth.

4) If you mean by "what's next" I would say that more and more people have grown more happy with the idea of inacting wealth taxes.  If you look at other nations wealth taxes have been reapplied as they go more and more socialist.  (Reapplied since wealth taxes are an older inferior system of taxation.)

(1)  I don't see how this addresses my question "Are you truly suggesting that a person would have to have more income than he and all his heirs, for all time, could ever want to spend before he had "more than enough"?"  (This was a response to "nor is it even neccisarily an amount the Super Rich currently have... afterall how long will there family persist?")  [edit:  Except, I suppose, so support the theory that the answer is "yes".  Is it?]

(2)  Do you here refer back to your idea of actually physically providing the "basic needs" stuff for people?  How do you envision implementing this?  Mass housing, for instance, didn't work out too well in the '60s, or so I hear. 

(3)  So you're justifying a person having absolute right to indefinite amounts of money beyond what he could ever want for himself or his family on the basis that he (or future heirs) might want to give it away? 

And actually, in the Dog in the Manger story I'm familiar with, the dog is not starving but simply lying in the hay.  I guess you could argue that he's getting something out of lying on hay but it's certainly much less than the cows.  It's true that in your idea the cows would not starve without the hay either, but the point is not letting someone else have something that one cannot use. 

(4)  A.  I would dispute that since it's only recently that the "death tax" terminology became widespread.  And people also seem more resistant to even the progressive income tax itself lately, which to me sort of torpedoes the whole idea of its corrupting influence.  (My evidence is the top bracket's taxation level and the amount of resistance it's getting to go up a few points to 1990s levels.  Just imagine if Congress tried to put them at late 1910s, early '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, or early and mid-'80s levels!)  As for other countries ... I don't know as much about them. 

B.  I was actually referring to your comment, "With a "Government knows when you are making too much" mentality who knows what's next."  As I said, the progressive income tax is almost a century old, and as YOU said, the consequences have already manifested.  So I remain confused what you meant here if it wasn't ominous handwaving.