Stealing candy from a baby, mugging a blind person, and knocking over the disabled are examples of things so despicable, we use these examples to describe a thoroughly immoral person. This is because we have a norm in this culture which condemns victimizing the weakest in society for financial gain. The Democratic Party has embraced this complete lack of a philosophical moral compass in order to move capital from the vulnerable to fund their patronage of their special interests. What can be more defenseless than a corpse? Most recently, these politicians have tried to make political hay of the tax bill because of the death/estate tax. They want dead people to pay more of their fair share. The Party has decided that crawling into the graves of the recently deceased in order to pry the gold fillings from the teeth of dead people is open game. They’ve come up with some absolutely disgusting excuses for their selfish, power-hungry behavior.
My congressman, regrettably, is a far left machine politician by the name of Keith Ellison, D-MN. He represents the Democratic Party and its public sector thugs from the city of Minneapolis. Ellison is furious because the estate tax doesn’t rob dead people enough. He believes the false narrative that the accumulation of wealth by individuals and families is suspect. The only way they could possibly have amassed capital is through illegitimate means, namely hiding their money from taxation.
Ellison wrote in his congressional blog:
“Double Taxation Critique is a Myth”
“Contrary to arguments that the estate tax is unfair because it is double taxation, the estate tax system is a fair one. In fact, much of the wealth accumulated in many estates of this size has never been taxed. This is because investment gains are not taxed until an investment is sold. When an investment is not sold during someone’s lifetime, the gains on that investment are never taxed. The estate tax steps in to address this issue, but is limited to only very wealth estates.”
The number of distortions buried within this statement are breathtaking. First, he asserts that “most of the wealth accumulated in many estates are not taxed until an investment is sold.” This premise isn’t backed up with any kind of evidence. It is asserted as true simply because the leftist narrative argues that capital accumulation is inherently stolen, and therefore untaxed. Most wealth comes from profits that accrue through efforts, work. Therefore the initial investments are already taxed as income. Furthermore, the profits on investments are taxed, as income. Ellison is trying to thread the needle by arguing that a business investment’s market value of the assets is not taxed as they appreciate. These capital investments are only taxed when the money is realized from the sale. As a result, these capital accumulations, from taxed money, have a difference which isn’t subject to the taxman and he thinks it should.
Ellison believes these capital increases are ‘free money’ to the inheritor and they are never taxed during the deceased’s lifetime. The horror of it all. Ellison sees this increase in the investment as a kind of ‘stealing’ from the government because it was never subject to his greedy little paws. So, instead of singling out the actual capital appreciation, Ellison wants every single part of the estate taxed at a higher level, just to ‘get’ this small part that isn’t realized and isn’t actually real upon death of the owner. Ellison seethes with the injustice of a hard-working father and mother passing down their savings to their family. If even a mere 10% of the estate is gained through appreciation, the entire estate should be raped at a 45% rate. This is what Ellison calls ‘fair.’
Ellison furthers this class warfare scenario by attempting to divide and conquer. His insistance that only ‘very wealthy estates’ would see a tax burden is relative. The $5 million floor is too high. Ellison believes $3.5 million would ‘get’ more of those greedy, evil capitalists and the money they cling to so bitterly. Perhaps at one time $3.5 million was a huge amount of money, but as a result of the rampant inflation of Keynesian economic policies and the collectivists’ insistance of cheap money, that number places small, family owned businesses and farms within his taxing zone. After considering property values, inventory, equipment, and all other manner of assets in a small business, this number reaches deep into the very heart of small business America.
Not that Ellison cares. All that money is out there for the taking. If he can just sway enough people to help him swipe the watch off grandpa’s wrist for sale at a public auction, he’s gained more political assets to pay off his union thugs and environmental whackos for another year.
My New Yorker carpetbagging senator, the Unfunny Comic, Al Franken, thinks this is just too unfair as well. Franken joined a bunch of class envy-warriors in June to rob dead people at increasingly higher rates, ostenstibly to teach them a lesson. Franken, his fellow Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and three other America Worsters proposed a tax package that would subsequently ‘reach back’ in time to punish those hateful people who cheated the taxman by dying in 2010.
- Reinstating the federal estate tax retroactively to January 1, 2010, with a $3.5 million estate tax exemption and initial 45% estate tax rate (the exemption and tax rate that were in effect in 2009).
- For estates valued above $10 million and below $50 million, a 50% estate tax rate.
- For estates valued above $50 million, a 55% estate tax rate.
- For estates valued above $500 million, a 10% surtax.
So, what would the effect of this kind of legislation have upon the American economy. Well, the class warriors argue this would somehow help the middle class. Franken argues on the Senate floor, “This proposal will help ease the burden of middle class families who are now expected to close the budget gap.” How? Franken has voted for increased spending by the federal government that exceeds anything ever imagined. The federal deficit has grown to over a trillion dollars every year. How is a few billion going to help the middle class when Franken’s Democratic/Socialist Worker’s Party cannot stop spending everything in sight.
Franken believes the confiscation of capital will lower the capital holdings of the families of dead people which will increase the number of lower income and middle class as a percentage of the population. It will do nothing to increase the income of other people, it just lowers the bar for those who have accumulated capital, thereby making it more equal.
What would actually have happened if the Vermont socialist and the New York carpetbagger had their way was the markets would be flooded with sales of investments to pay off excessive tax bills. The markets would become undercapitalized and have to shrink. The businesses would be forced to close shops and factories and layoff workers. The number of unemployed poor and middle class Americans would grow. The capital stolen from the pockets of dead people would pay off government unions and social welfare advocates. This capital would just become pocket money for the Democratic Party hacks to further bribe more voters and spread their misinformation schemes on public airwaves.
No one would get richer. Everyone would get poorer. The pie would shrink. The cacophony of the left would only grow louder, which is really what they want.
The class enviers are not done. They are absolutely philosophically committed to screwing the dead as much as they can. Representative Betty McCollum, D-Saint Paul of the Minnesota Fourth Congressional District pushes this ‘eat the rich’ narrative with a barely coherent call for an increase in the death tax.
“This is a deal that will continue to explode the deficit while the rich get richer and struggling middle class families get crumbs. The Republicans successfully held unemployed Americans hostage to give even more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. This plan is irresponsible, and I will oppose it.”
So, McCollum, barely cognizant of reality in the best of times, believes that dead people are the real problem with the budget. Dead people are greedily ‘stealing’ the prosperity of the living. They are reaching out from the grave to explode the budget. Her votes to increase the federal budget by 30% aren’t the problem. It isn’t her spending Chinese borrowed money on dog parks and watercolor art classes that caused these budget issues. It’s the mean, maniacal dead who have more than their fair share.
Meanwhile, the poor working class (public sector unions) and middle class (public educators) are getting the raw deal. They have to work over 180 days a year while accruing lifetime pension and health care benefits for thirty years past retirement. They must struggle with paid union meetings and educational opportunities, which increase their pay scale. These poor, put-upon classes will be forced to wait until age 60 to move to Arizona and Florida while milking the Minnesota system. How terrible it is for her pet special interests to have to wait for us to fund their leisure.
Betty wants us to climb into the grave, rip the inherited, (therefore untaxed) engagement ring off grandma’s finger, fish the gold moneyclip out of grandpa’s pocket (gift from his company retirement and therefore untaxed), and if necessary the cuff links (inherited gift, once again untaxed) to fund her political allies’ piggish ways. You see, the government, in Betty’s eyes, is the only fair arbitor of economic prosperity. Certainly the market and the hard work of the individual cannot be taken into account. We must descend into madness robbing graves and marginalizing our fellow citizens in order to grow political power.
We are seeing a Democratic Party that has become so corrupt and so money hungry, the very idea of moral behavior escapes them. Not too many years ago, there were Democrats who believed in capitalism and the individual worth of human work. It wasn’t so long ago that a Democrat could actually say proudly they believed in limited government involvement in other people’s lives. That is no longer truth. The escapees from the Marxist asylum of academia have taken control. They are busy stealing from everyone who isn’t a bona fide ally and to hell with the rest of us. We are witnessing a kind of economic thuggery which is dangerous and inept. This kind of shallow thinking and deceptive rhetoric are destroying our economy, our government, and our freedom. We are living in sad times indeed.
Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com
Neil Stevens
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Daniel Horowitz
Jake Walker
