What was originally a reasonable article in the newspaper about how the estate tax affect many more than the rich and how it should be eliminated, became yet another slam on success, ability, and everything America worked to become.
USA Toady printed an article by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise institute called Boomers Beware: Estate Tax Now Not Just for the Rich.
It started by stating that the estate tax is only applicable to amounts over $600,000, which has made it in the past apply only to a small group of the very rich. However, Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age - and when they pull their tax-deferred saving out to live on, they multitude of taxes, including the estate tax, could take up to 90 percent of their money away.
Seems reasonable to want to fight that.
What I wonder, though, is why it's okay to take it away from the very rich, as our government has done in the past, versus the Baby Boomers. Because you're earned more you should be punished more? Because you're earned more means you don't have a right anymore to what you've earned?
The concept of a redistribution of wealth should be like fingernails to a chalkboard to every American. America was based on the right to work for a living, and the right to be able to keep what you're earned. That's why, as Americans, most here have a profound hatred for communism - because most here believe that you should be rewarded for your achievements, not punished. But placing a higher burden on the very rich via taxation is a form of wealth redistribution, yet many people don't think twice about it.
The article then goes on to drop the bomb: