How Dismantling an Obscure Tax Created an American Aristocracy

1. I completely agree that the Trump tax cut was unnecessary and will be disastrous for the US economy.
   Where you lost me was when you introduced the premise that estate taxes are just, and when you trotted out the specter of "inequality".

   Inequality in and of itself is completely irrelevant. Someone who has a personal net worth of $100 million is still rich, despite the fact that Jeff Bezos' PNW is literally a thousand times greater than theirs.

   Estate taxes are no different from any other kind of tax that a politician may care to try to justify — except that one cannot opt-out. If the government doubles the tax on cigarettes or gasoline, one can avoid that by simply eschewing those things. Not so with an estate. To justify a tax, the state must show compelling reason why it is just that they should deprive someone of something, like they would have to do if they wanted to exercise imminent domain and seize a person's property. If the government decided to put a $1 per gallon tax on drinking water, they had damned well better be able to show why that is just, and they could not. The death of a person does not suddenly give the government a legitimate claim on that person's property, so what is the justification? -"because we can"? That's a "might makes right" argument, and flawed from the get-go.

   Let's suppose that instead of taxing a decedent's estate, that instead the government decided to impose a tax on a person's total net worth at the age of 60. How could they justify that? They could not. So how can they at the moment (or year) of their death? After all, at age 60 (or 59, or 40, or whenever), a citizen could choose to give all of their belongings to one or more of their children, and neither the parent nor the children would be taxed on that. So what makes the arbitrary event of a person's death entitle the state to help themselves to a portion of the property that a person may have spent their life collecting, for the benefit of their children? It's a nonsensical argument. It all either comes down to "might makes right", or spite against those with more assets, or socialism. Governments should not be allowed to facilitate any of those things.

2. What the hell was TRN smoking when it gave this tool a pulpit to spread his dangerously misleading “solutions?”

   Government running a deficit is NOT the same as an individual, or a family, living on borrowed money (i.e. credit) that must promptly be paid back with interest to avoid unpleasant consequences. It is a FALSE equivalency and acting like it isn’t plays into the hands of neoliberal austerity hawks of the sort currently destroying Greece on behalf of the EU and IMF.

   To repeat: Government budgets are NOT the same as household budgets, which must promptly be balanced to avoid unpleasant consequences. I can’t believe TRN does not know this. Taking the “fiscal responsibility” myth as gospel is a how Democrats and New Labour sold out to capitalism and completely destroyed governments’ ability to create budgets that include social services and programs that benefit all people, not just the rich.

   Is Paul Jay working with a full deck? Is TRN pandering to the libertarian right with this garbage? If so, why?

3. 9:00 The Democrats could call out the Republicans relentlessly. That the tax cuts are only a precursor to cut spending for the regular people. But the Dems in Congress and Senate are rich or at least wealthy they get money from that class. They do not really dislike the cuts – they just need to protest a little bit – just for show.

4. That guy is another neoliberal tool. It is not hard to chose between taxation for the upper 30 % (which still would do really fine !) and the well being of the population. High taxes for the rich and big biz, they did that in the New Deal Era and well into the 1970s. (JFK and Nixon discussed in very matter of fact mannner 72 % effective top marginal income tax. during a debate in 1960.

   The U.S. is one of the nations that CAN do something about it. Then it had not been made possible by politicians ! to evade taxes. They would of course try that. Welll, good thing the U.S. can counteract that. And call big Finance to order while they are at it.

   They have the spying apparatus, they have the backdoors to the SWIFT code. the billions parked on accounts in tax havens * were not brought there in form of bank notes in luggage. (They also know what is going on in aircontrol). So if someone would fly bank notes in a plane it would be noted. Also: it is quite an operation to get as much "pieces of paper" together.

   * that is figuratetively speaking. the "money" never left the country. Money are digital entries on accounts (which are also digital entries). "Transferring" money from one aCcount to another is a digital bookeeping exercise backed up by some legal secret contracts.

5. The Republicans are for WINNING by any means necessary. Hand wringing over debt is a trick to defund welfare. Of course they start to throw around with mone to please their constituency. Rich people, Big Biz, the military industrial complex. Reagan did it, Bush1 started an avoidable war. Clinton was the fighter for neoliberalism – and he HIT poor people to have a surplus so the Republicans loved him (secretely for that as well). As soon as they came into office they squandered.
   Bush did Reagan on steroides (the tax cuts, bigger wars and a much, much larger financial crisis).

   Obama was only "allowed" to squander money on banks, big auto and the military. Of course the Republicans would have rioted against infrastructure spending. That would have created jobs, regular people would have liked it. NO WAY the Republicans would allow that. A
   Not that he even tried – like the Clintons he is a servant of Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Health, ……. and wealthy and rich people. He wants to be one of them. Well, he is – now.

   Obama made the Bush tax cuts permanent.

6. The deficit or even debt is NOT per se the problem. – see MMT Dr. Stephanie Kelton – But of course in the U.S. (before the Trump tax cuts) it needed attention. – I would ALSO refer to MMT – the U.S. as (still kind of) reserve currency cannot just create money – on the other hand – the billions on tax havens parked in USD must not be protected. For China (holding a lot of debt) compensations could be found to give them something of VALUE, for KSA (another holder of U.S. government bonds if they start to behave like a civilized nation).

7. Nobody with a phone to call an economist believes cutting taxes raises revenue. ghw bush called it vodoo economics in 1980. It was purposeful, duh. Ryan said ss needed to be cut in less than a week. And by the way, they do not have to match. You can spend in deficit on social programs and that money does come back around

8. Taxation is theft!

9. Vilify Republicans if you want. But had Leading Democrats "walked their ethical talk," the Clintons, Feinsteins, and Obamas wouldn't be worth hundreds of millions as they incite 1960's style race riots based on racial grievance hoaxes meant to distract the masses from their power grab.

10. This was a road to nowhere that never veered from conventional wisdom. No solution has ever eventuated from such unimaginative thinking. Bring on Michael Hudson or Stephanie Kelton and an interviewer who is familiar with MMT.

11. The comments here are bizarre. Progressives who buy into the idea the government can indefinitely spend dramatically more than it taxes are truly thinking in terms of free ponies. Stephanie Kelton's position has been misunderstood. By investing tax money differently she argues the economy would grow and tax revenues would ultimately catch up -which is nothing more than the traditional Keynesian economic approach instead of the supply side voodoo that began in earnest with Reagan. I'm staring to think a lot of "progressives", which I consider myself, are very misinformed on rather basic points and often times are actually bigots themselves with their extreme identity politics positions. That self righteous ignorance and arrogance will doom this movement.

    Thank you to the real news for educating progressives, this guy knew what he was talking about.

12. The issue isn't the IRS is having a hard time enforcing their new world order theft of our money, its that Congress allows large monied people and companies to avoid taxes. The Times did their investigation into Trump's family wealth being passed down, something that everyone should be allowed to do without the parasites getting their hands on it. The times should do a study on how GE or Amazon or many defense companies pays less than they should. Or MicroSoft or the Rothschild's constant wealth transfer scams. Bullshit only goes as far as the person hearing the bullshit not knowing more facts than the bullshitters are offering. The IRS and The Fed and the BAR are the main problems when our economy and system. That's what the conversation needs to address

13. Deficits are not necessarily a problem, increasing inequality is a problem, increasing the deficit is not necessarily a problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSjzYC9vGiM

14. https://www.needtoimpeach.com

15. help

16. https://www.needtoimpeach.com

17. please

18. https://www.needtoimpeach.com

19. Ha! Republicans haven't been fiscal conservatives since Bush II.

20. I am not supporting at present but Supremacist idiots don't understand.

21. "The federal government creates ex nihilo [out of thin air] all the dollars that it chooses to spend into the economy in any given year. Federal taxation functions as a control on inflation and aggregate demand, and is entirely unrelated to spending.

    In fact, since taxation does not give the federal government anything it cannot already create, there is no real sense in which dollars collected by the federal government can be spent again. There are no tax dollars flying in and out of giant tubes in the Treasury Department!!

    Federal taxation is merely a digital transaction that deletes dollar balances in private bank accounts, and federal spending is merely a digital transaction that adds dollar balances to private bank accounts.

    When we send tax money to the government, nowadays usually as a wire, the dollars that existed only as numbers in a checking account are functionally destroyed. They are no longer part of the monetary base, because the Treasury’s General Account at the Fed is isolated from the monetary base (unlike the accounts of all state and local governments and the entire private sector).

    US dollars can only exist in bank accounts outside the Treasury, so when the Treasury spends, the monetary base increases, and when it taxes, the monetary base decreases. Only the US Treasury (and Fed, for distinct reasons) can affect the monetary base in this way. As the sole issuer of US dollars, the US federal government does not and cannot “use” or even “save” dollars that only it can create."

    http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2014/02/hey-democrats-please-stop-talking-about.html

22. Criminal Republicans and their pet supreme court.
    Deep merde. Vote.

23. To even TALK about ANY form of taxation is an insult to the very idea on which the United States were founded, when MILLIONS of its citizens are deprived of the right to cast a fully counting, regular vote on election day.
    LET THAT SINK IN, FOLKS!

24. Yeah, it's ALL Republicans. And Barack Obama prosecuted Wall Street. Enough with the partisan hackery, please. There is, as Gore Vidal noted often, one political party in America: "The Property Party… and it has two right wings."

25. Both parties are corrupt. They are both pushing this right wing agenda.

26. cutting taxes on the greedy pigs plys 800 billion a year for the war profiteers sounds like a deficit bonanza

27. Reinstate a new New Deal. FDR got reelected three times after introducing it the first time.
    It resulted in the greatest expansion of the middle class this country has ever seen and brought us out of the Great Recession.
    Someone with guts has to do it again. Maybe Sanders if we push him, just like the citizens did to FDR.

28. A death tax is a disgrace. The state already once taxed the family for what they earned, and both punishing people twice for the same thing and benefiting off someone's death are immoral.

29. There is a very good reason the estate tax was created.
    We've all played the board game 'Monopoly'.
    Imagine if the winner of the last game was able to keep all their money and property for the next game.
    That would make playing another game futile.

30. I don't think it would be such a hard choice to simply raise taxes on the one percent so much that the 99 percent don't have to pay any more taxes. I have a hard time believing there would be any kind of uproar amongst the voting constituency were such a tax plan implemented. This leads me to wonder where the Dems were back when they controlled Congress & the Presidency back around 2009 and previously. The guest on this program seems to be following the carefully choreographed mainstream political narrative that treats middle class income tax as an inevitable main source of revenue for the Federal government. Wealthy individuals and corporations are lavishing in obscene levels of wealth — so let them cover the government revenue. Why should those who are struggling to make ends meet just to live a modest lifestyle have to carry any of the revenue burden when there are parts of society that could easily cover all the bills without missing a step?

31. American Needs to STOP the WARS FOR ZIONIST ISRAEL and REDUCE their Pentagon Arms and Weapons of Mass Destruction!!😠😡

32. Hand over huge piles of cash… what typically happens is a business or farm is sold at auction prices in order to pay the taxes as there is not any where close to enough cash to pay multi million tax bills… then the business is closed and 25-50 employees lose their jobs… thus reducing the tax base and cash flow of the entire town.

33. US workers were most affluent when union membership was high and the marginal tax rate was above 90%.

34. SHAME on you, TRN, for letting this establishment hack spread vile economic nonsense about deficits and debt. This is unacceptable. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.

35. You lost me as soon as you started talking about "interest on the national debt"… DERP.

36. This entire video is propaganda for socialism. The only people who want estate tax are those who have nothing to leave to their children and grandchildren. If you had built a successful business and corresponding bank account you would be against estate tax. Estate tax = death tax.
    Why should we pay tax on income that has already been taxed at least once and probably more. The way things are now a person has to resort to legal chicanery in order to avoid taxes at death. I have been preparing for several years to avoid my son having to pay tax on what I’m leaving him in my will. So I put his name on my properties and have been withdrawing cash from the bank and stashing it in my safe at home. This way when I die my properties simply remain his and all he has to do is take my name off of them. As for the money I’m leaving him all he has to do is open the safe and it’s his lol. That way he doesn’t pay tax on the $2.3 million dollars I’ve put in my safe.

37. The real News Network should be ashamed of itself having this gentleman on your program who clearly does not understand economics going on about the debt and the deficit the debt and the deficit are a myth admittedly the tax cuts are driving in equality I can only say that the real News Network must have economist on your program that speak the truth and who know what they're talking about dr. Stephanie Kelton Bernie's chief economic advisor and the chief economist on the 2015 budget committee thank you

38. The rich get rich because they pay no taxes- they pay no taxes because they all have common law Trusts that protect them and always will because they know what they are doing- and they can afford the best scribes.
    The nation has been bankrupt since 1933, so, there is no money and the bank is supposed to be paying the expenses of the American people- and it does to the ones who understand it, like the rich.

39. The money sieve department of invasion and bombing could shave 25 percent easy livin'…a measly trillion for a not sure it can fly bird's nest of technical wishful weaving standing in fine testimony to this pathological beast to which we've allowed control of our money. Corpses are people, you know,.

40. Taxation is theft. Cut spending and stop trying to take my hard earned money

41. Gosh, like quid pro quo FOR WETHEPEOPLE gets a half point over COLA…and people are kept pacified with low interest pick-up's, Uh, no talk of CUTTING THE OFFENSE BUDGET? Heellllooooo…

42. It thinks that wearing glasses will make "her" appear smarter. Alas! It doesn't. But then, he is pretty dumb as well. Fail.

43. It seems that the conservatives would like for the middle class and poor to pay all the tax and allow the rich to live without paying any tax at all. How in their greedy little minds do they see that as fair? They are parasites living off the back of others and have convinced themselves they are morally and intellectually superior and therefore entitled to special treatment.

44. Socialism is only for the rich (gov contracts and tax breaks). Capitalism is for the poor (fighting and bartering the leftovers)

45. First, ban any politician from taking any Corp/Lobbyist and Super PAC's $$$$ and institute Public Financing of all Federal, State and Local elections.

    Bring the Tax rates up to 1950's level, add a 1% transaction fee on all speculative Wall Street transactions, Quantitative Easing, as a means of wiping out Student Loans, and cut the Military and at least half the 700+ Military bases around the Global. Great Green Jobs and Infrastructure programs to create millions of jobs.

    Yes it is bold and aggressive. But is was sure damn bold and aggressive with the duplicity of Republicans and many Democrats to cause all this pending economic disaster.

46. Please bring on Dr. Stephanie Kelton! Enough of this cut social security & Medicare nonsense.

47. Flood of shills in the comments

48. As an example, members of the second generation Walmart family have little interest in anything other than travel and personal pleasure. All they know is that money is not a problem.
    Their great wealth is really a block of capital that is presided over by money managers and hedge funds that are in for a cut of quarterly profits.

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