The Death Tax, Because they won't mind...

This entry is part of the Carnival of the Objectivists. Be sure to check it out, over at The Rule of Reason, and see all of the great entries. There's quite a good turnout today!

Now, on to the Death Tax:

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The Senate has a rare opportunity coming up to repeal a tax, something that has to be near-unprecedented.

It’s a small tax, as far as the federal budget is concerned. It consists of somewhere in the neighborhood of one percent of the total taxes collected. There are some very good, and violently ignored, arguments that the cost for all the accountants and lawyers to keep track of the darned thing are more than the actual amount of money coming in to the government. There’s also a wealth of supply-side evidence which presents the uncomfortable fact that a repeal would likely increase tax revenue.

Just as important as any of those reasons is the moral reason to repeal the tax. As with any tax, it is morally repugnant on the grounds of its violation of a man’s right to keep what he earns; his right to live for his own sake. But this Death Tax is especially repellant because it takes that premise so much farther.

Consider the very idea of a Death Tax, for a moment. The deceased has already paid whatever taxes were demanded in the first place when he earned his wealth. If he wanted to bequeath this money while he was still alive, he wouldn’t have to pay a tax on it first. (although unfortunately, the recipient might)

So why does he have to pay extra for being dead? Is there something wrong with dying, that it has to be punished or something? No, the answer is far more sinister: in the eyes of the taxman, he’s just collecting what was his all along.

You see, your property was never yours at all. “Your” property, and by extension your life, belonged to the state. They were just letting you use it. Everything you have is, in the end, their property.

To quote the villain Orren Boyle in Atlas Shrugged,

But as deplorable as the premise of this tax is, it pales in comparison to the arguments used to defend it. The Anniston Star has an article entitled “GOP seeks death of tax fairness,” which illustrates this point nicely. (those with weaker stomachs may want to skip this next part…)

It’s a textbook example of what I have often called, the Marxists’ total inversion of the facts.

Oh, the class war has resumed has it? Because the wealthy want to end the practice of near-total confiscation of their wealth, they are somehow engaging in “class warfare?” In fact, the repeal of the Death Tax would be an act of moving to end the class war that our mixed economy has brought us.

Again, the exact opposite is true. The primary beneficiaries are the deceased, whose wishes of what should happen to their hard-earned fortunes will once again be respected, instead of desecrated. Their response, of course, is that the dead’s wishes need not be respected… they’re dead:

Need I even respond to this? I suppose they advocate grave-robbery, as well? I mean, it’s not like corpses need those fancy tuxedos.

Ah, but the Marxism doesn’t stop there:

Textbook Marx! Rich peoples’ arguments for keeping their own money should be automatically ignored. They’re rich. They need say no more.

Of course, when non-rich people get together to fund political pressure groups to enable the looting of other peoples’ wealth, somehow the same logic doesn’t invalidate their arguments.

But if that wasn’t enough to convince you to embrace their Marxism, they have some… um… well, class warfare arguments to apply:

See? If you don't let them loot the rich, then they’ll come for you instead while those fat cats sip their Dom Perignon. Pure class warfare, naked and unashamed.

What kind of argument is that, anyway? They may as well pass a bill implementing nationwide decimation, and sell it on the grounds that the first nine out of every ten people shouldn’t worry about it because it’s not targeted at them. This call to fiscal cannibalism, by the way, is part of the “moral argument” which they think gives them license to ignore economic realities.

Ah, but once again, there is a certain historical familiarity:

(thanks, SoftwareNerd, for the quote!)

-Inspector

Nicholas Provenzo comments from the Carnival:

To which I say: Right on, brother!

-Inspector

P.S. A public thanks to Nicholas for organizing the Carnival of the Objectivists, and for getting me in at the last minute.

This ultimately rests on people's assumption that they have a right to judge whether other people deserve property obtained through voluntary transactions. When the original owner bequeaths property to a particular heir, be they family or not, that is no different than a transfer of property as a gift or payment during life. The heir has no obligation to demonstrate that they deserve the inheritance; the fact that they were designated by the previous owner transfers legitimate ownership.

It is interesting that the only cases where inheritance could be properly labelled as unjust were tied to government. It would be unjust to require that property be passed on to a particular family member (as in mandatory primogeniture) or to confer political office by inheritance. The first case denies the previous owner's right to property just as much as an inheritence tax, and the second confers powers that cannot be legitimately owned, only delegated by the citizens. The aristocratic tradition in Europe essentially set up a straw man where the idea of inheritance as such could be attacked based on abuses which stemmed from the rejection of property rights, not from their recognition.

The only instance that I can think of when the previous owners wishes might be ethically disregarded is a case where property was left to a cat or some other creature or object that did not possess a right to property. I am not certain whether others would be morally bound to respect the original owner's wishes in that instance, or if the right of ownership would die with them. Even in that instance, however, I see no reason why the state has any greater claim on the property than the first person who came along and took or occupied it.

I think that this is part of a larger argument form, used by Marxists all the way back to Marx himself, which I like to call the “Look at the silly monkey” argument. (as from South Park’s “Chewbacca Defense”) The idea is to distract from an important principle, most often that of property rights, by pointing out a possible injustice that property rights allow (i.e. choosing to give one’s estate to a worthless bum).

By focusing on the “silly monkey,” as it were, they distract from the fact that it would be a larger injustice by several orders of magnitude to try and stop the small injustice by force. What is far more important than any bum’s inheritance (which is not so bad because a fool and his money are soon parted…) is the principle of property rights, which must include the right to do foolish things.

It’s a hijacking of the audience’s sense of justice. The solution is to think in principles, which is precisely what you’ve done right there, Cunctator.

This is another classic trick; a particular application of the fallacy of the frozen abstraction or possibly the conflation of the metaphysically given and the man-made. They take a current, rights-abridging, aspect of how things are being done (i.e. inheritance as aristocratic) as the given. Rather than remove the abridgement of rights, they pile on further abridgements to “balance” it out. This can be seen with, say, their solution to the problem of socialism in medicine (i.e. more socialism), or their refusal to examine the necessity of social security.

The only way I think something like that may work is if they set up an entire company whose purpose was to use the inheritance to care for the cat. The cat wouldn’t be the owner of the inheritance, but rather the company would. (and it would have a charter set to tell it how to do everything)

Failing that sort of arrangement, I suppose the will would be forfeit. The inheritance would have to go to the next of kin as per whatever the law says to do when there is no will at all.

Argh, they chickened out.

As I said, they are soft and spineless