Huh? there are very few times in human history where there hasn’t been a surplus of labor. How would a “true free market” change this?
There are no laws of economics, only hypotheses. And they are all disputable.
You’ve hear of economies of scale, right? But at any rate, the idea that the ability to produce better/cheaper/whateverer products will magically protect one against wealthier or more powerful interests is hopelessly naive.
No it’s not. You have right to keep it, or be compensated for its taking, but not to give it to anyone you want.
If you cannot transfer the property to someone else, then it’s not yours to begin with. The right to property implies the right to transfer ownership.
“Bordering”?
Fifth, actually:
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty,** or property, without due process of law;nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation**”
Where’s the right to inherit in there?
Right. And the merchant bankers who not only did not produce but destroyed trillions of dollars of value in the economy got paid just fine, as did their minions at the top. Your little capitalist Utopia has little in common with the real world.
The former CEO of HP, who destroyed 40% of stockholder value in under a year, got millions of bucks to leave. Another case that disproves your contention.
In support of your contention, during the bubble the richest did very well, but so did the middle class and even many of the poor. Income inequity actually fell, and people were pretty satisfied. The problem now is that the rich seem to be doing better on the backs of the 99%, who have seen their incomes stagnate.
I don’t know how you would implement this, but it is a good idea in general.
Bill Gates did not do much for the economy at all last, year, busy as he is with charity. However, I’m fine with him having made money (Jobs too) for building stockholder value.
Now, let’s talk about Ballmer. Given the stagnation in stockholder value, and Microsoft’s many blunders, how much do you think he should have made last year?
How about Léo Apotheker. I know they canned his ass, but they did give him millions of bucks as a parting gift. If he had convinced the board to let him stay, how much should he get for destroying 40% of stockholder value in less than a year?
CMC fnord!
That’s silly, people are forced to work harder for less all the time. And the more of a “true free market” we have the worse it gets because people have fewer protections and fewer recourses.
What “laws”?
On the contrary, it’s obvious self interest on their part. The wealthy and the corporations have always recognized their collective self interest against the common people. And acted on it. They shape the culture and the laws to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us.
Ridiculous; they can and do crush people who try to compete with them. There are many famous cases of just that happening; Walmart for example is notorious for it.
Of course there is; they are called things like “the Republican Party leadership”. The people in power have always in every culture promoted propaganda and religion that supported them. In this case, the propaganda that you are parroting; it’s tailor made for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful and has very little connection to reality.
Ridiculous. Plenty of people stay in jobs they hate because the alternative is impoverishment, homelessness or worse. Economic force is just as coercive as a gun in the face.
Garbage. America is one of the least socially mobile developed nations.
The right to property doesn’t make you exempt from taxation.
What does that have to do with your claim that “right to inherit” does not exist in the Constitution?
Show me where in the Constitution you have an individual right to someone else’s money.
One someone gives it to you voluntarily, it’s not someone else’s. It’s yours.
So Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the Walton family, Andrew Carnegie, Corneilius Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan were all psychopathic, lying, corrupt, leechers? :dubious:
Anyways remember the dictum “A society that places equality above freedom will get neither, a society that places freedom above equality will get both”
There’s nothing in the constitution that would make an estate tax unconstitutional.
No. There is also nothing in the Constitution that would make an income tax unconstitutional - in fact it explicitly is Constitutional. So what? What’s your point?
if you make the “estate tax” too onerous, and there will be myriads of ways invented around it. You try to stop those ways and myriads of new ones will spring up. You try to clamp down on all of them and the “rich” will start moving the wealth out of the country. It is a natural, biological, instinct to provide for your progeny. You will not stop it by onerous “estate tax” or any other means.
And then you have a constitutional right to keep it, or be compensated for it’s taking. But inheritances aren’t given to you. The inheritance is property that was once owned by a person now dead, and through laws not required by the Constitution we allow that property to be transferred to someone else. Those laws can be changed without Constitutional concerns.
The inheritance is given to you by a contract that was signed by the giver. The death of the giver does not invalidate the contract.
Pretty much true. Gates stole the operating system and used it to start the computers at IBM. His genius was forcing computer buyers to have to buy his system. He made money off every damn one . I am sure IBM had no idea how many computers were going to be made.
The rest were Robber Barons not unlike the Bankers of today.