Maggie's Farm

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010855

New report from Treasury on income categories 1996-2006.

''offshore Soros and offshore Kennedy''

nobody but nobody who has both looked these two's advocacy of higher taxation and also their actual personal practices, will be appalled that the citizens have not ridden 'em outta town on a rail, tarred & feathered.

will not be appalled. sheesh. Some days can't simple sentence construct a I.

ya, ya, on da poor scandinavians always da making uf da fun

Yep, thousands and thousands of high dollar policies sold by Berkshire Hathaway to small businesses trying to cope with a FIFTY PERCENT death tax.

but, hey your heirs get to keep the other half!

Of course, it's already been taxed at least twice while you were alive, so upwards of three-quarters of that dollar of risk capital you began with (provided that the ordinary risk of 'risk' hasn't relieved you of it in the interim) will have gone to finance the Giant Sucking Machine in DC.

Better hope that at some point while you owned it it threw off some capital-formation (which will also get taxed several times).

Hey, who let this crap get so outta control? If you described 2007 to George Washington in 1776, would he have bothered raising an army and fighting for seven or eight years?

narrow down, CC. The objection is with the punitive aspects of the system.

For example, the estate tax, which causes all sorts of asset mal-investing (where it creates enormous growth disincentives), causes successful entrepreneurs to slack off at certain levels and ages (fewer new jobs and less new taxable income created), and has been demonstrated repeatedly to have an oppurtunity cost far greater than the revenue it hauls in.

The tax brought in 24 bbl in '06 and cost the Treasury alone a good chunk of that--in already-paid taxes of course--to inspect, audit, and enforce.

Nah --it's strictly punitive. In a race, would tripping the fast runners make the slow runners speed up? No, it would just hurt the fast runners AND demoralize for everyone else the whole idea of running fast in first place.

It's class-warfare, is all it is--and it costs a LOT.

What you must understand--and I admit it requires a cognitive leap--is that the class-warriors are not stupid; they DO know all the above, but DO NOT CARE that it is a money-loser.

How can this be, you ask? It's because behind all the Neanderthal static-analysis misdirection is the coldly intelligent understanding that too much private property means too few class-warfare voters.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTQzODgwMGNkMjcwN2MyOTJlZGUzMTM5ZjE3NGIxMDk=

The Corner is on it. Here's a snip:

>>''The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) spent $9.6 million on lobbying last year and is on pace to spend more than $10 million this year — and that’s on top of the lobbying efforts by its individual members, the life insurance companies. Why? One life insurance industry lobbyist estimated last year that the industry gets about 10 percent of its business through estate planning.''

13% or 17% or even 20% --but, reduce the code to a sheet of paper comprehensible to normal human beings.

Right now the tax code is 16,000 pages and it costs somewhere between 50 and 100 billion/year just to prep the forms. And this doesn't count the opportunity cost of the time or the money.

The only possible justification for this situation is as a jobs program for tax professionals.

But couldn't they just be paid to stay home and read or garden or something?

It'd still be far cheaper and better for the average joe and the economy he has built.