Ron Paul Proposes Tax Breaks For Wealthy Estates
When it comes to freedom, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul seems to think that it all comes down to one thing: Money. He believes that property rights are the foundation of all rights. In other words, Ron Paul believes that, if a person doesn’t own anything, they don’t have any rights.
For this reason, Ron Paul proposes giving special tax breaks to wealthy estates. Paul writes,
“If you truly own your property, you have the right to dispose of it any way you wish. You can sell it, give it away, or direct who will receive it when you die. This control is the essence of property rights. If you can’t control what happens to your property, you don’t really own it. That’s why the estate tax is so destructive”
The problem with Ron Paul’s defense of tax breaks for wealthy estates is that there is no such thing as a legal right for people to spend money however they wish. The Constitution does not contain the phrase “property rights”, and does not establish the concept of general property rights in any language at all. People do not have the right to dispose of their money in any way that they wish. They cannot buy nuclear weapons, for example. They also do not have the right to dispose of hazardous materials they own by just dumping them in the nearest river. In the United States, people may have property, but they also have a responsibility to other people.
That’s why we have government, and it’s why the government has the constitutionally-established right to gather taxes in order to sustain itself. Government is the collective creation of all citizens, through democratic participation and through the contribution of money. Government mitigates between individual desires and the needs of society as a whole, protecting individuals from each other.
Ron Paul’s proposal to abolish estate taxes encourages selfish irresponsibility. Money is not, after all, just property. Money is an embodiment of what people can expect from their government, and from each other. People may own what they buy with money, but society as a whole is what makes money valuable.
What Ron Paul forgets when he defends abolishing estate taxes is that the taxes are not paid by the people who die and leave their estates to their inheritors. Estate taxes are paid by the inheritors. Wealthy people have the right to accumulate massive estates, and to direct certain people to inherit those estates, but once the inheritance takes place, they’re dead, and they don’t get to direct their money as if they’re alive. The dead do lose control of their property. That’s a natural part of death, and there’s nothing Ron Paul and his libertarian supporters can do to stop that.
Inheritance is a form of income, just like wages in compensation for work, and it ought to be treated in the same way. It is unjust to make people who work for their money pay income taxes on that money, while giving people who inherit their money a special loophole that allows them to keep all of their income.
Estate taxes are necessary because the accumulation of the power of property is destructive to society as a whole. If people like Paris Hilton, who gain substantial property just through their luck of being the children of extremely wealthy families, do not have to pay their share to support the government, then non-wealthy citizens have to give a larger share of their own property to keep the government functioning.
(Source: Sierra Times, June 14, 2006)
Date: July 2, 2007
Categories: election 2008, money, republicans
(423 votes, average: 2.90 out of 5)
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