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Hawaii’s World
GEORGE W. Bush is making campaign mileage, I presume, by promising to abolish the "Death Tax" as soon as he can if elected. President Clinton set this up by vetoing a bill sent him in August. ‘Death Tax’ should
not be abolishedBush and the Republican Congress that passed total repeal of the Death Tax ought to be ashamed. So should all their rich buddies.
Bush pins the name "Death Tax" on the federal inheritance tax levied on estates worth more than $675,000. The exemption will ratchet higher over the next few years.
Abolishing the tax is unholy. We should, in simple fairness, continue to tithe giant fortunes for the common good in a nation where millions of people today work at jobs that don't pay a living wage -- and where purchasing power for nearly 60 percent of the population declined over a recent 20-year period.
Globalization and high technology are wonderful things but morality says they should be used to raise living standards for all peoples, not just the upper crust. By evading national borders they have widened income disparities worldwide -- even in the rich and powerful United States.
The Death Tax is a way for the very rich -- without hurting during their lives -- to pay back a tithe on their success to the most wonderful free-enterprise system in the world -- ours.
The winners are too quick to see their millions or billions as the results of their smarts and work effort. They are far too slow to recognize it was the American system and economy that made it possible.
If wealth were anything close to evenly distributed my argument would not hold water. But the disparities, even in America, are vulgar and growing.
Recently the Wall Street Journal reported that if Bill Gates paid the same percent of his net worth for a theater ticket as the average person, tickets for him and his wife would cost almost $19 million.
My argument will draw rebuttals that it is better to give the new national tax surplus back to all of us than to let bureaucrats fritter it away.
This appeals to my bias against bureaucracy. But I don't know how to get free drugs to elders without using our existing Medicare apparatus or massively improve nationwide educational opportunity without more federal support.
COMMON people at the bottom of the economic totem pole deserve both of these. They are key to the success of our economic system, even as it drives many to service jobs. Today's globalism and technology are whittling away their security -- even their self-esteem.
Most may not be as endowed with the education and entrepreneurial talents of those who have succeeded so dramatically. Yet, as Abraham Lincoln said, God must love the poor because he made so many of them.
It should be an honor to pay a big Death Tax, not a burden.
There is talk of raising the present exemption still higher. That would be far preferable to abolishing the tax entirely. Now the tax tops off at 55 percent after kicking in at 40 percent for estates over $675,000. A man and wife can double this to $1.35 million by splitting their joint worth.
A farmer who might have to sell his farm to pay the tax was chosen to transport the repeal bill in his red tractor from the Capitol to the White House. Good theater. Wisely, Bill Gates wasn't chosen to drive.
Nicking billionaire estates for the common good is a wonderfully fair tithe for the opportunity America offers.
Besides, keeping the tax stimulates charitable giving. That's not bad either.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.