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Francis W. Porretto's avatar

It's been said that bad ideas are immortal, and the parallels between Britain's death duties and the Harris "unrealized gains tax" proposal certainly seems consistent with that. Your analysis put me in mind of an observation from a great British mind, the late Cyril Northcote Parkinson:

-- Wasting the labour of the people “under the pretence of caring for them” is exactly what our governments do. Freedom is founded on ownership of property.... It cannot exist where the rulers own everything, nor even when they concede some limited right of tenure. But the modern belief is that spendable income is a concession of the State. The taxation which is intended to promote equality, the taxation which exceeds the real public need, and above all the tax which is so graduated as to prevent the accumulation of capital, is inconsistent with freedom. Against a State which owns everything, the individual has neither the means of defence nor anything to defend....

There are many human achievements, including some of the finest, which need more than a single lifetime for completion. The individual can compose a symphony or paint a canvas, build up a business or restore order in a city. He cannot build a cathedral or grow an avenue of oak trees. Still less can he gain the stature essential to statesmanship in a highly developed and complex society. There is a need for continuity of effort, spread over several generations, and for just such a continuity as governments lack. Given the party system more especially, under the democratic form of rule, policy is continually modified or reversed. A family can be biologically stable in a way that a modern legislature is not. It is to families, therefore, that we look for such stability as society may need. But how can the family function if subject to crippling taxes during every lifetime and partial confiscation with every death? How can one generation provide the springboard for the next? Without such a springboard, all must start alike, and none can excel; and where none can excel nothing excellent will result. --

May God bless and keep you.

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JasonT's avatar

Running out of other people's money is a distinct possibility.

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