bo, i actually empathize with you and your generation...life is going to be hard for you guys...i have two kids and its going to be hard for them, but bad ideas that don't help the Capitalist way of life that our country was founded and thrived on will be our undoing...if this is not palatable to you , you are free to announce your citizenship and move elsewhere

denounance----f-ing autocorrect

Bo went to get his blankey, curled up into little ball on mommies bed and is now sucking his thumb(make it stop)(make it stop)( please mommy, make it stop)

ssoren - just make sure your kids get a *useful* degree and have a work ethic, and they will be OK. As for the rest - fuck'em, we always need ditch-diggers and road builders, eh?

I would remove inheritance for class and race based reasons. Not not only race. It is a lol to perpetuate accidental possession of wealth, which is not just unjust and inegalitarian, but also wasteful, since the inheritors, as bootstrappers ought to know, worked for precisely none of the money.

Of course abolishing inheritance isn't going to happen anytime soon. It's as ingrained in western culture even as property itself. But that doesn't justify its existence - it only explains it.

We believe that inheriting titles and positions is undemocratic, unfair, and even barbarically antiquated in the modern era - one day we will say the same about the unearned continuance of wealth.

It's one of the main ways the rich stay rich and indeed get richer. I don't have to tell you that inequality is one of the principle social malaises of our day.

we always need ditch-diggers and road builders, eh?

agreed, that is what people who take the Govt handouts should be doing....our infrastructure is terrible....if we give we should get i return

Thucy===go pick oranges

#OrangePickThucy hehehe

#fuckthucy

The ability to inherit is a cornerstone of society. To pass some of the fruits of your labour on to your children is the single greatest motivation to achieve in the first place. A family that can inherit is a family that can plan in the long term, a family more likely to resist short term frivolity, a family of strength and stability.

To attack inheritance is to attack the will to succeed, to attack long term thinking, to attack families and society. It is a disgraceful idea that I would fight with every fiber of my being if I thought for a moment it had any chance of being accepted.

go OCT

I think the current system isn't bad, although the exemption amount is way to low. It should be $5 million per beneficiary is tax free and then tax at say 35% above that. No one can live on the interest of 1 million dollars and it is currently based on the entire estate value which, when divided up amongst potentially many beneficiaries, a million dollar estate can be just a few thousand per person and when you then take a chunk of that away because the estate was 7 figures, you basically disincentivize the idea of leaving something to your estate.

I like your thinking, it is currently $5.125 million per estate is tax free, then 45% above that...thats just federal

$5.34 million. Those poor ultrarich.

@Draugnar: although that's mostly a fair assessment, I want to say something about this bit:

"No one can live on the interest of 1 million dollars"

First of all, with, say, 2% interest, you get 20,000 (did that number the American way for you!) each year, which isn't too bad I'd say, but then there's inflation, interest might be lower and you might simply disagree that you can live off 20,000, so I'll accept your premise as plausible.

Now what I want to get to is that you don't need to live off interest only, even if you don't work or anything. Why? Because next to interest, you also have the actual million.

You can spread that million out over a century, and including 2% interest, you end up with over 30,000 per year on average if I got that right from the top of my head. I imagine that's well above the poverty line, and then there's still inflation of course, but I also assumed you live a century upon inheritance which is a rather safe guess, very much against my favour, which compensates for inflation quite well I'd say.

It's still arguable, depending on what you can live on and what you call living, but I dare say that I could live a decent life with 'just' a million.
I don't intend to spend more than $30,000 per year anytime soon, unless I decide to buy a house (one time) or a fairly expensive vehicle, but that's luxury IMO, for which I'd have to work.

I agree that a couple more million is probably better though. So I don't disagree with your conclusion, just that one sentence.