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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: TigerPaw who wrote (9411)1/23/2006 5:21:00 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 541249
 
We apparently have very different ideas about fairness.

I don't imagine some market mechanism would produce a result that we both find fair.

Look at it this way. Imagine Sally is much wealthier than Bob. Imagine Bob thinks Sally should share some of her excess wealth so that he can have a better life. He thinks this is only fair. If you create some sort of artificial market mechanism for Sally and Bob to bid on Sally's wealth, or some percentage of her wealth defined as excess (and how do you determine what is excess?), Its likely Sally won't think any result is fair except one that allows her to keep all of her wealth or at least the vast majority of it. However elegant the mechanism you are unlikely to achieve consensus between Sally and Bob.

Getting back to the issue that started this, inheritance, I think it is fair that people are allowed to pass on their wealth to their heirs. More over I think that the government has no inherent right to that wealth even though it may have the power to grab it. Even I would agree that the heir does not have a right to the wealth that they have inherited (and I would not agree to this idea), that still wouldn't mean that taxing it away would be entirely justified.

Tim
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