Vanderbilt bribed the legislature to permit him to issue watered down stocks in defiance of the state laws. He did it to defeat a consortium of Gould and Fisk. He was a ruthless and without honor.
Follow the conversation. I was talking about estate taxes.
“Don’t you feel you have the right to hand down your fortune to whoever you want to?”
“Pretty sure there’s no “right to inherent” in the Constitution.”
“The right to property includes the right to give said property to anyone you want. And that right is in the Constitution.”
“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?”
“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?”
So there was a claim that estate taxes would be a violation of the right “to hand down your fortune to whoever you want”. I said that no such right exists. The right of property exists but there’s nothing in the right of property that prohibits taxes, including estate taxes.
The validity of the contract is not required by the Constitution. The laws allowing inheritance can be changed without amending the Constitution.
Bill Gates did not steal the operating system. He bought it.
First of all, I don’t see such a claim. Can you point to a specific post where such a claim was made?
There is the “right to give your property to whoever you want”. It’s the same right as the “right to own property” - since owning it means you can give it away. That doesn’t mean that the property cannot be taxed.
An onerous estate tax would be a violation of that right. And as I pointed out above, people usually find ways around such violations. There will be such ways found.
Property transfer contracts’ validity is inherent in the right to own property.
The validity of any particular contract is not determined by the Constitution. But since you admit that estates can be taxed, this is a pointless argument. I’ll say the inheritance tax should be 100%.
LOL. “First amendment gives you the right to freedom of assembly. You admit that fees for permits for demonstration are allowable. I think such permits should cost $10M”.
I made no such admission.
Such fees exist. They are not unconstitutional.
Post #41 by msmith537.
We were discussing taxes. Why did you bring the right of property into the discussion if you didn’t think it involves taxes?
He didn’t say that estate tax violated that right.
Because you asked where in the Constitution is there a right to pass inheritance. If you don’t want the answer, why did you ask the question?
Just want to point out that while you can give away your property even before you die, there are tax consequences if you give away too much.
In any case, the money came from Windows, which he didn’t buy. He might have coped from Jobs, but Jobs copied from Xerox.
The money came from Microsoft Basic. Windows and Mac both copied from the design developed at Xerox PARC. Gates used the money made from MS-DOS to buy up other software, and use predatory practices to put other companies out of business.
Yes, that’s true. The main reason for inheritance laws is that people don’t trust their kids or other heirs, so they don’t give away their property before they die.
I agree, but if you want to reduce misery as much as possible then you need the government to stop poor people from breeding instead of encouraging poor people to have children by giving them food stamps and subsidized housing and tax credits.
Poor people have way more children than rich people.
The poor children end up living poor in misery and continue the cycle of misery.
It should be only people who can show they can contribute to humanity are allowed to have children.
Yes, it is sad that the rich children end up living rich and not in misery but they don’t populate the country as much as the poor.
My solution is the USA Govt should force sterilize everyone who breeds without a breeding permit.
Really?
So you feel that when he quoted a post about estate taxes and then raised the subject of the right to pass money on to your family, he was not sort of implying the subjects were related? You figure he just quoted a post about estate taxes as a way to open up a completely different subject? Personally, I didn’t see it that way. I thought that he was saying the right to pass money on to your relatives was related to the subject of estate taxes on account of that’s the way conversations normally work.
However I’ll admit I seem to be misunderstanding your posts. For example, I can’t figure out whether or not you think there’s anything in the constitution that prohibits an estate tax.
Nobody here has ever said that people can’t pass an inheritance on. The question is whether inheritances can be taxed and if there is any right that says they can’t.
Do you think people have a right to not pay estate tax? If you do think there is such a right, where is it found? And if you don’t there is such a right, why did you and msmith bring up the issue of rights in the first place?
Is there anything in the Constitution that prohibits a fee for a demonstration permit?
Just like in my example for the demonstration permit fee, it depends on the size of that fee. Or the rate of that tax, if you prefer.
Paying an estate tax is a little different from the confiscatory policies TriPolar suggests.