Mutterings of a contrarian Liberal.
The title comes from a phrase attributed to William Spooner: 'Her late husband, you know, a very sad death - eaten by missionaries - poor soul.' Although it was a slip of the tongue, its sense of people doing the unexpected is an intermittent theme of this blog.
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Friday, October 19, 2007
A Neo-Con defends inheritance tax
I always like it when people come out with arguments you wouldn't expect given their general political outlook. So I enjoyed this defence of inheritance tax in The Spectator from right-winger Irwin Stelzer.
The social engineering aspect assumes that those outcomes are best which is not necessarily true.
The economic aspect - unearned wealth - well why not LVT instead? That has many other advantages too.
Given we have a far more equal society than at any time in the past and the richest are less rich than their predecessors in real terms, why do we need it?
2 comments:
I don't much like that defense.
The social engineering aspect assumes that those outcomes are best which is not necessarily true.
The economic aspect - unearned wealth - well why not LVT instead? That has many other advantages too.
Given we have a far more equal society than at any time in the past and the richest are less rich than their predecessors in real terms, why do we need it?
It's an efficiecny argument, just like breaking up monopolies, concentrations of capital clog up the free market system.
There is a need for balancing mechanism's to keep things working.
One of the reasons society is more equal is wealth taxation, other countries tax wealth annually too, like France!
We are slipping back on equality though and getting rid of IHT would worsen this too.
As for double tax, anyone remember MIRAS and it's fore-runners?
What about the whacking relief for CGT on main homes? Could easily get rid council proxy house tax then! ;-)
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