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.
In places where wealthy people want to be and are not just there for tax advantages, higher taxes often don’t make many wealthy people leave. Keeping high-skilled professionals is more important to a city than keeping super wealthy people.
German middle class people tended to support Hitler’s Nazi Party. They were afraid of Communist rebellion from below and dominating wealthy elites from above.
“Capitalists create new wealth. They don’t take a big slice of the pie and leave us a sliver. If they get rich, it’s because they find ways to bake lots of new pies.
That’s what’s happened in America. Its why today, even poor Americans have access to things European kings only dreamed about.
Capitalists can get rich only by making all of us better off.
Actual economist Dan Mitchell explains, “Billionaires only kept 2.2 percent of the additional wealth they generated….The rest of us captured almost 98 percent of the benefits.””