In my observation on this topic for quite a while now, this really will boil down to a philosophical, world-viewish kind of thing. I personally fail to see what is so wrong with being able to give most of what I worked very long and hard for to my kids. I don’t mind some of it being taxed, especially if the government is at all reputable, but not at numbers like 55%. To say, well we all just need to start from square one in our lives, as I often hear on this subject seems to represent some other core view on life, which I find a bit inaccurate. I started from square one, even though I may get a few hundred “k” in a few years. To make ends meet, I wear clothes forever, drive old cars to death, sweat all summer, and freeze all winter, and by golly I pay a lot of taxes, too.

Rayne, you say: “I don’t have a problem at all with paying estate taxes on something that I didn’t earn, that my parents earned — if that’s what it’s going to take to keep my kids educated, my roads paved, my stepson in Kevlar when he’s in Iraq.” — Aren’t there other ways to tax for things like roads, education, etc.? It’s not like this money hasn’t already seen itself peeled away a few times. As for Kevlar, if the money already sucked down the sinkhole of corporate corruption hadn’t been such, they could have already provided enough Kevlar to build a Kevlar canopy over the entire country. I fail to see how taking 55% of my parent’s sweat and toil, even times xx,000 of others is going to help these problems.

But, this is the core outlook thing. I just don’t see it as a sin to pass on most of what one has to the next generation. I understand that the tax was conceived to prevent families from getting too powerful. No problem with that, just the numbers we are working with right now.

One question, why then do you apparently support doing an end around on it by gifting some of it away? You say: “If we’ve accumulated enough to hit the threshhold AND we didn’t figure out how to gift most of what we earned …” If you have no problem at all with these taxes, doesn’t it seem contradictory to find a way to avoid paying some of it?

My main contention is not opposition to the tax, or my mother’s estate ultimately having to pay some, or my estate either one day. The thing that bothers me is how this topic is hurled around these various forums as one monolithic ball of seething vitriole. Very few people apparently in the democratic/liberal political wing seem to be able to hold a reasoned discussion on this topic. Very few even will respond civilly to anyone who is not utterly opposed to any relief from this tax at all.

AND, on the right, the problem is the same — my gosh, if you are one iota FOR the tax, you are subject to being tarred and feathered in talkshow host one-liners, with no room whatever for any normal discussion of opinion.

Jane, I’ve known for a long time that your penchant for hyperbole and exaggeration would trip you up, and when I glimpsed the headline on this post, I knew your “blogger hubris” had caught up with you. Why can’t you report the facts on the ground right the first time — don’t you realize this kind of inaccuracy will cost the entire New Journamalizm Movement credibility?

If you can’t report accurately the first time on the Lieberman campaign’s attendance numbers, we might need another blogger ethics panel.

Have you prostrated yourself before Kos so he might determine your Errrata Award?

I’m not at all sure I could stay in “concern” mode long enough to finish even a short comment — clearly I slipped up in the above — but I’m willing to try.

I just hope the contest won’t get hurtful; that’s why I had to go off the rails, to ensure the audience that I wasn’t changed into an underbridger.

hopping against hops?

(teetotalers)

ho-ping against hope? :~)