You failed to explain how the Kennedys have stayed wealthy. As have other families of "old wealth".
While the estate tax will confiscate significant portions of the wealth of families like Waltons you cannot offset the effects of compounding returns on investment with a 55% death tax. That money is earned back quickly within the ensuing years.
The support of the death tax rationally has to be on other grounds ("we need the money"). It does nothing significant to prevent accumulation of wealth. If I have 2 billion and you steal 1 billion of it, within 10 years I'll have earned back what you stole from me.
That does NOT, however, make it acceptable for you to steal the billion from me. Over a lifetime, from cradle to grave, that investment will double multiple times. Even a 55% death tax rate cannot kill the will to prosper.
As to your unrelated comment, the Walton family is basically conservative, and many conservatives oppose taxation generally, and the death tax in particular. At the same time, Bill Gates supports the death tax and he stands to gain hugely. As does Buffet. And others. I've not seen any statistics on it, but whether there is correlation at all isn't clear.
This is a subject you obviously don't understand. You're argument of course is, "Oh, that's that much less of a pooling than there would have been". My response is, "Does it matter"?
If you want to stop some people from being richer than others, you are going to need to find a way to stop people from innovating and doing great things. |
