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by chris-orgmenta 886 days ago
> What is your take on inheritance? I understood that you think that it should not be allowed? You called a divine right! Should the gvmt have your assets? If not who?

I think that my inheritance should be a heavily progressively taxed, yes. Divine right is part of it, but I of course acknowledge that people often have 'earnt' the inheritance they receive.

> If you like to pay takes and are looking forward to pay more, there's nothing i can add to convince you.

I don't like it :) But I think it's the right thing. Although - Yes I completely agree that governments are wasteful, and I would endorse anyone that engages in tax evasion and gives the diff to 'charity'. I am also a conscientious observer and struggle with defence spending in particular. In my eye that's really a part of conservative-socialist positioning though, rather than where to get the tax revenue from.

> My original comment on this is related to punishing the savers that accumulated that capital, i can't fathom that.

Completely appreciate that issue yes - My argument essentially is incentivising people to spend their money before they die, and asking them to strike the exact right balance against retaining appropriate emergency funds until then. (Partly why I say progressive tax rather than outright confiscation though, FWIW).

> I think that gvmt's are wasteful and i just don't like to pay high taxes because i had $0 20 years ago. In this particular situation its even worse because it's double taxation.

I would rather they took your money from your inheritance, than taking it from your weekly wages. I don't want you to be penalised for working and creating value. I would prefer $0 inheritance tax to $1 inheritance tax... But I would choose inheritance tax over income tax. <-- That's the crux of it really. I'm not pro inheritance tax. I just think it's the best place to take people's money from, the place that least penalises people for good deeds (other than tax revenue through fines. Then I would argue that sales taxes are a better revenue collection method than income tax partly for the same reason. But we still need all of these taxes in place, I would just rebalance to incentivise production amongst other things.).

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I appreciate you humouring me on this with the principle of charity and the spirit of debate here!