Barney Frank wants to tax lifestyle choices?
Barney Frank justifies a harsh estate tax because, for no other reason, the people inheriting the money did nothing to earn it.
For starters, Barney Frank should be the last person in this country to be encouraging broad judgments and persecutory laws against people who are in a situation not of their own choice. The very fact that all of these estate taxes penalize people who have already paid taxes on those assets makes it purely a persecutory law targeting a section of the population for no logically justifiable reason. The law does not penalize those “who did nothing to earn it”, as Barney asserts, it penalizes those who did earn it. Barney just assumes it’s dead-beat kids. It could be the business partner, life partner, kids, or even the charity the person who DID earn it chose to leave it to. More importantly to me, the person who DID earn it has already paid taxes on it. When it was income, they paid once. If it’s assets, they have paid every year since they had that asset. When they die, this tax lowers the value of their estate. The “person who did nothing to earn it” is not expected to pay anything on their own assets. They are expected to pay a percentage of what they were to receive. So, this is not a tax on them. It is purely, and 100%, a tax on the person that died. Barney’s not arguing the facts of this legislation. He wants you to blindly believe his rhetoric that certain people need to be taxed because of nothing more than who they associated with.
