Joe Bob's America: Death and Taxes

NEW YORK, April 12 (UPI) -- When President Bush repealed the estate tax, he kept saying it was the Death Tax. In fact, if you do an Internet search on the words "Death Tax," you can find a kajillion articles, indicating that people actually followed his lead and started calling it the Death Tax.

So I guess now that would make it the Dead Death Tax.

Of course, we never actually had a tax on death itself. We've always left that to the private sector in the form of the oily guy at the funeral home. What we had a tax on was dead people's junk they leave behind. A better name for it would be the Dead Miser's Property Tax, giving us the right to go pry the cash out of the deceased's cold clenched fingers. (Presumably we could take a few guns out of circulation in the process.)

What's amazing to me is that this is no longer a popular idea. For the first 225 years of our existence -- up until about, oh, last year -- Americans were famous for hating hereditary privilege almost as an article of faith. All those English lords and noblemen who kept leaving their estates to the first-born son were the guys who screwed everything up in the first place. Thomas Paine may have been a wacko, but when he wrote "Common Sense" in 1776 and said that nothing should be hereditary, the only guys who disagreed with him had London Zip codes.

Lemme point out something here for the reality-challenged:

He doesn't need his money anymore!

He's dead!

He's not coming back!

Ahem. Okay. Now that that's established, let's look at the

reasons the opponents of the Death Tax got rid of it.

Numero Uno: They say a dying man should be able to arrange his affairs and give his wealth to his offspring as an expression of love to his family.

This is actually the ultimate Affirmative Action program, isn't it? Republicans don't like Affirmative Action, but they do like Affirmative Action for second-generation millionaires. You're born with a ticket to college and the keys to an SUV.

I've got two words for you: Doris Duke. And she's only the most notorious example. Trust Fund Baby Welfare never works. We just end up with legal fees. Because it's not like the family is united by the wise and equitable decisions of their dead relative. Not to mention those cases of the loving son or daughter who wants to speed up the process a little bit by spiking that Alzheimer's medication.

I didn't think I would need to say this, but: THERE'S NO CORRELATION BETWEEN MONEY AND FAMILIAL LOVE. Or to quote super-investor Warren Buffett, never a guy to squander a nickel, "The idea that you get a lifetime of food stamps based on coming out of the right womb strikes at my idea of fairness."

Reason Numero Two-o: We needed to shut down the Death Tax because it saps the initiative of the entrepreneur. He knows all his money is going to the government when he dies, so he just peters out and stops trying.

This might be true if he knew the precise hour of his death -- he might slack off those last couple of weeks -- but the fact is: BILLIONAIRES DON'T MAKE MONEY BECAUSE THEY NEED IT. THEY MAKE MONEY BECAUSE IT'S THEIR WAY OF KEEPING SCORE.

Look at Sumner Redstone. What is he, 98? If he retired tomorrow, he'd have to start a multinational discount-bandwidth trading company just to have something to do before his afternoon nap.

Numero Three-o: The Death Tax was an infringement on ancient property rights. A man should be able to keep his land in the same family.

This one is positively medieval. I seized the land, therefore I will bequeath the land to my heirs. It's sort of the Divine Right of Genetic Landlords. In fact, land is a commodity just like toothbrushes and time-share condos in the Catskills. You can improve it, mess it up, squander it, pollute it, have some of it taken away when the railroad goes through, pay too much or too little for it. You can just leave it empty and roll around in the dirt or hold nude mud-wrestling matches on the back forty. But the point is: ONCE YOU'RE DEAD, YOU DON'T NEED IT.

Let's quote another multi-millionaire on this point. Andrew Carnegie, who gave away 90 per cent of his fortune before he died, said, "It is not the welfare of the children, but family pride, which inspires these legacies."

Numero Four-o: The Death Tax never did provide much income for the federal treasury in the first place.

True. That's because everybody knew the tax was there, so they got rid of their money BEFORE THEY DIED. They built hospitals and law schools and Institutes of Death Tax Studies with that money.

Besides, the purpose of the tax was not to raise money. The purpose of the tax was to make sure we didn't end up with Lord Gates and his baronial fiefdom ruling the money trough for generations.

The first real advocate of a serious estate tax was Teddy Roosevelt, and his targets were not the little real estate developers with a few apartment buildings, but the mega-empires of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors and Morgans.

They were the first generation of industrial millionaires, and they were trying to create an American aristocracy. But if we're gonna have aristocracy, let's have one in name only, like the Daughters of the American Revolution or the descendants of the Mayflower. Go to the Downtown Athletic Club, have a whiskey sour, wear a medallion on your coat and talk about the old days, but MAKE YOUR OWN MONEY.

If you read the Federalist Papers -- not that anyone does anymore -- there are extensive passages about limiting wealth, privilege, position and power to ONE generation.

That means we shouldn't be taxing future generations with stuff like Social Security schemes, and it also means we shouldn't be giving people a free ride on the basis of what their granddaddies did in past generations.

Dead men don't have civil rights. It was the American system that protected their fortunes in the first place. You can't spend it in the coffin, and if your son or daughter spends it for you, FedEx still won't deliver to the coffin. I'm surprised I have to explain these things.

(Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at [email protected] or through his website at joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.)