The View From 1776

--------
In Socialism and the Inheritance Tax I wrote:

“A little background puts the inheritance tax in true perspective.  It was a major element in the socialistic platform from the inception of socialism in France in the first decades of the 19th century.  American socialists after the Civil War continually pushed for such a tax.  They were joined by the Populists in the 1880s, then by the Progressives who took up the cause after the Populists essentially went out of business following William Jennings Bryan’s defeat by Republican William McKinley in the 1896 election.

“When Democratic President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to authorize increases in our army and navy to defend the nation, as World War I became an increasing threat to the United States, the socialists and Progressives saw their opportunity and pounced.

“..... Beginning with the followers of Saint-Simon and Comte in the first three decades of the 1800s, socialists became known as social engineers..... For those social engineers, the goal was to create a homogenous society in which everyone had as nearly equal income and wealth as possible and in which everyone looked to government planners for all basic needs such as education, housing, jobs, food, and clothing.”

Wall Street Journal editorial writers had the following to say:

Till Death Do Us Part
July 8, 2005; Page A10

Karl Marx must be rolling in his grave, and don’t even ask about V. I. Lenin: Russia eliminated its inheritance tax last month. Its move comes after January’s decision by the government of Sweden, the birthplace of the modern-day welfare state, to eliminate its estate tax. Like the Russians, the Swedes have come to believe that the tax is unjust and economically counterproductive. Russia and Sweden join Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico and Switzerland as nations that don’t make death a taxable event.

The U.S. now has the distinction of imposing the most onerous death tax in the industrialized world. The federal estate-tax rate is 45% on every dollar above a $1.5 million exemption, but in many states the combined federal/state tax on dying rises above 50%. This means that the government can snatch a larger share of the business, home and savings that a citizen builds up over a lifetime than would go to his heirs. If this sounds, well, a bit communistic, it is. The third policy plank of Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” is “taxation of all inheritance.”

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin pushed the death tax-repeal bill through the lower chamber of Parliament by a vote of 414-2. Here at home, Mr. Bush is straining mightily to round up just eight of 44 Democratic Senators to permanently liberate America from this confiscatory tax when repeal comes up for a vote later this month. Let’s hope they can muster at least as much faith in capitalist incentives as Europe’s former Marxists.

****************
Senator Christopher Dodd, my home state’s perennial contender for Socialist of the Year, must be very proud of this signal recognition among world socialists.  As Washington Post columnist David Broder noted in 2002:

Opening A Trillion- Dollar Hole
By David S. Broder
Sunday, June 16, 2002; Page B07

It is not often that one hears a United States senator confess in public that he was “truly dumbfounded.” That was the phrase Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd applied to himself the other evening as he contemplated the fact that most of his colleagues were about to open a three-quarters-of-a-trillion-dollar hole in the nation’s future finances.

I can’t improve on Dodd’s language. It is truly mind-boggling that majorities in both the House and Senate have voted to compound the budget problems of the nation by making permanent the abolition of what they choose to call the “death tax,” more commonly known as the tax on large estates.

Visit MoveOff Network Members