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Money is just a way to affect the world. Taxation is fractional slavery--the government is confiscating some of our power and using it to serve its own ends.
No, your dad's money is not really yours--it's his, and he's choosing to give it to you. He's decided to exercise his power that way rather than some other, shorter-term way. Why should the government have any more right to confiscate money intended for this purpose than money intended for any other purpose?
Because he’s dead, for one. A man’s right to dispose of his money as he pleases considerably diminishes with his passing. I don't consider a corpse an equal citizen.
Then, it’s more of a value thing, but I think a man should pay his own way. Not rely on handouts, be they from the state or his family. I think this is good, results in a more productive & happy society. I’m more of a minarchist than a social democrat, however even I find inherited wealth inequality unfair. Heirs give wealth a bad name. The populace would be less supportive of high taxes if that contingent was reduced to zero.
Well, it wasn't a corpse that wrote the will. The reason we generally honor contracts, wills, and arrangements even after the passing of the one who made them, is because when they were alive they had the right to make those decisions about the future. It's not that that right remains when they pass--it's that at the moment they made the decision/signed the contract, they had the right, and that moment is what matters.
If, for example, I sign a contract to rent out movie rights to a book I wrote, and then became brain-damaged and incapable of signing future contracts, you can't retroactively go back and order my rent contract be voided because I'm now incapable of consenting to the contract. Even if I now lack that right, what matters is whether I had it when I signed the contract.
Wills do not honor the rights of dead people--they honor the rights of living people to make contracts which remain in force when they die.
The alternative would be really weird. Say that rather than giving the money to you, he gives it to an architect with plans to carve his face into a mountain somewhere. When he dies, can that architect simply run off with the money, since the contract is no longer in force? Do contracts generally become null and void when someone dies, or only if they involve money going to people's descendants?
Yes, generally, they should be voided. Dead people should not (and in practical terms, do not, because they're inanimate) have the power to coerce the living. Your mortgage payments are usually voided with your death. Your IP rights should also be voided.
Again, it's not that dead people have power to coerce the living. It's that living people have the power to coerce each other in the future, including in futures where they're dead.
When I take out a loan, I'm getting money in exchange for signing a contract obligating me to pay it back over time. If I die, the contract should remain in force, or it prevents the contract from being made in the first place, and deprives me of my current right to sign such contracts.
IDK what you're talking about here. It's not like the mortgage goes away. The bank gets its money back, often when the home is sold. If mortgage payments were actually voided, banks would never give old people mortgages in the first place.
Semantics. I don't believe you should have such 'current rights', because they are future 'dead people's rights'.
I find it ludicrous that some dead people control giant foundations for decades when they are incapable of enforcing their will or even reacting to things. It's like worshipping a statue. Fake veal or whatever the christians call it.
They get insurance that pays off if the borrower dies.
Not semantics. I currently have a mortgage. I think I have a right to make mortgage agreements that involve the bank getting its money back in the event of my death.
That's just not true.
At their most fundamental level, one important thing laws need to do is reflect reality. And in reality, there are innumerable ways to do things that echo for generations after your death.
The death itself is fundamentally unimportant. It's not like it matters that much whether you die and send your money to an NGO, or send your money to the NGO 1 second before death--either way you're choosing, while alive, to give your money to an organization with long-term plans.
What's the alternative? Confiscate the money from the NGO because the donor died soon after donating? Require that all organizations only make year-long plans, because nobody has the right to plan further in advance than that?
I get the complaint about unaccountable NGOs, and dead people exerting overly much influence, but you're taking this to quite an extreme.
An older relative of mine died, and the mortgage was instantly paid off by the insurance he and the bank had contracted with the loan, so I was going off that. But in any case, the loan is also guaranteed by the house, and so the bank will give out such mortgages to the elderly, even if, as I recommend, people have no power after death.
I don't know where you're getting this from. The NGO should be taxed normally, they don't have to give back anything, what's done is done. When the man dies however, his assets should be heavily taxed before it reaches any NGO or heirs.
An echo is not equal to the original sound. The dead are not equal to the living. I respect your rights, partly because I'm nice, partly because you have the power to defend them. Unlike the dead. What could be more important than this distinction? And I'm not interested in being nice to inanimate objects.
I brought up the NGO as an example of someone exerting influence decades after their own death, something you have an issue with. The point was to demonstrate that really this has little to do with the actual moment of death--it's quite easy to set up the NGO while still alive. Creating an inheritance tax the way you have in mind will do nothing at all, because people can just give their money away soon before death. You'd just end up with everyone giving their assets to their children years ahead of time, then living in "their son's house" and subsisting off of "their son's retirement account" until death.
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Why does the bank get the house instead of the government via inheritance taxes?
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