Danny ChaiAs I’ve mentioned before, I’m against repealing the estate tax. I’m not a socialist, but I’m against solidifying and reinforcing the lines between the haves and the have nots in this country. It just seems that in history, a widening gap between the poor and rich is a precursor to a lot of societal problems, even the downfall of civilizations.
Plus I’ve never heard a compelling argument for repealing it. Some people bring up how it’s double (or triple) taxation, as if that’s inherently wrong. We get doubly taxed all the time, on our income, then on things we buy, etc. The arguments I heard for it last time I wrote about it were the most disturbing – that people will always find loopholes anyway so it’s not even worth trying. What kind of defeatist attitude is that? Why even bother enacting any laws at all then?
All this to say Paul Krugman’s latest article was really interesting. He is similarly against repealing the estate tax, and he talks about an argument the repealers bring up a lot, that it causes farmers to lose their farms. Krugman says that this is a completely made-up argument, that there is not a single real case of a farmer losing a farm to pay the estate tax. I was shocked at that claim. The farmer thing brought up so often, could this actually be true? But it’s so easily verifiable, it’s hard to imagine that someone so well known would throw it out casually. Anyway, I found it very interesting.
If you’ve never read it, this classic Krugman article is also really interesting; he explains macroeconomics by examining a baby-sitting co-op. Easy to understand, and makes a lot of intuitive sense.