Economist Luigi Zingales was on Fox News for something other than the estate tax, but they asked him about it and he said he was for it. He was never invited on Fox News again.
Frank Luntz was hired by the Republican Party and groups funded by super wealthy people to fight the estate tax. He renamed it the death tax so people wouldn’t think of it as a tax that mostly affected the super wealthy.
The problem with the super wealthy and taxes isn’t tax rates, it’s that much of their income is not taxed at all. It isn’t counted as income. Before the fall of Communism, the American super wealthy actually paid taxes, but without the threat of Communism, there wasn’t the pressure to show that capitalism will work for everyone. Many changes, and a lack of reform to catch up with gaming the system, has resulted in the estate tax being a joke and the super wealthy paying very little tax compared to their lifetime income.
High income people pay taxes, but the super wealthy don’t officially have much income. Of course, they do have income, but it doesn’t count and is often never taxed.
America’s rising debt, inequality, and inability to appropriately tax its wealthy, rhymes with what was happening leading up to the French revolution. The French put off their economic problems until the only solution was revolution.
The Laffer curve confuses economic incentives with social reality. Most people can’t just stop working or even work much less, because tax rates go up. Even those who can stop working, often keep working in the face of higher tax rates. Some countries with high tax rates have high growth. The marginal tax rate whereby most people will work less is very high, like 70%.
“The poorest 10% of households will lose an average of about $1,200 in resources per year, amounting to a 3.1% cut in their income, according to the analysis released Monday of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Households in the highest 10% of incomes will see about a $13,600 boost in resources on average, amounting to a 2.7% increase in their incomes.
Earners in the middle of the distribution will see their annual resources grow by about $800 to $1,200 on average, according to the analysis.”
“The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have a land trust, the Qualla Boundary, which straddles parts of Swain and Jackson counties in the Smoky Mountains, in the western part of the state. In the mid-1990s, they greatly expanded the gambling facilities on the Boundary to include a large casino. Some of the profits from the casino are ploughed back into the tribal community in the form of community services –roads and sewers, hospitals and clinics, gymnasia and schools. But some of the money goes straight back to the individual tribal members in the form of a payment every six months, the amount dependent on the profits from the casino. The “per cap”, as it is called, goes to everyone, young or old, healthy or sick, working or unemployed, law-abiding or not, as long as they are members of the tribe. (Money for children goes into a bank account for them until they graduate high school or reach age 21, whichever comes first.) In recent years the amount of the supplement has been around $4,000 a year.”
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“In 1993 my Duke University colleagues and I began a study of the mental health care needs of 1,420 randomly selected children living in the 11 western-most counties of North Carolina. We were especially interested in the American Indian community, because it provided strong access to mental health care. So we ensured that a quarter of the study sample were American Indian children – 350 of them.”
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“All of the American Indian children in the study, but none of the children in the surrounding counties, lived in families that had received a considerable boost in income.”
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“Four years after the casino opened, Indian children had fewer behavioral and emotional problems than did neighboring children. Moreover, the effect continued into adulthood. At age 30, one in five of the American Indians had mental health or drug problems, compared with one in three of those in surrounding communities. The Indians had less depression, anxiety and alcohol dependence. The payments had no effect on extremely severe but rare mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But those who had received the supplement had better overall health and fewer economic problems. The younger the participants were when their families started getting the casino payments, the stronger the effects on adult mental health.”
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“some individuals spent their extra money foolishly, on drugs and drink, just as was true outside the reservation. Most people used their income supplement wisely, however, and there was no evidence that people worked fewer hours. And, of course, it is much cheaper to give people a check than to administer all the complex means tests that go with government welfare programs such as Supplementary Security Income benefits.”