Maggie's Farm

Absolutely.

One change we should make is to charge everyone for the government services they received in their lifetimes that they didn't pay for. We should have an estate tax to pay that bill. It would be an estate tax but not for redistribution purposes. The first $100,000 of your estate, or what ever it is, goes to the government. It should be calculated for each individual so that if you used more services (retirement, Social Security, unemployment, etc.) you would be charged more. It would have the effect of saying you don't get a free ride. think about what you're asking the government to give you. And it would really piss off your kids if you voted yourself a new benefit. It would also snap the middle class back to reality. The poor wouldn't have the estate to pay with and the rich could just write a check. But if a middle class family had both parents die and owed $150-200,000, that would get their attention. It would mean that the house equity you thought you had was just money from a bunch of bills you skipped out on. If we could make all this clear and transparent we could have a chance at solving it. Both republicans and democrats don't want that to happen.

And wouldn't that cause a recession? If you think putting a bunch of money into the economy stimulated it, then taking a bunch out should throw us back in a recession right? But did the stimulus bill do much of anything? Maybe taking a large chunk of everyones estate would (after the shudder) motivate them to work harder, smarter, longer to build it back up again thus growing the economy. Economists don't know. All we know for sure is that if you believe stimulus - good, pay back - bad, then you can never pay it back. Deficits forever. Think of all the countries that has worked for. (But we're different, we can quit anytime we want.)