A CALL FOR A MAXIMUM ESTATE TAX – INCLUDING MINE

My name is Howard and I have been an inheritance beneficiary.  And I will stand to be so again in the future.  My wife and I have a more than adequate annual retirement income, a modest investment portfolio, own two homes and will likely outlive our financial resources.  So, we will leave an estate.  Wouldn’t it make sense to champion any movement to lower estate taxes?  But, I do not.  Not one to be shy about my ideas, crass at times some would say, unduly bold, even a touch “in your face,”  I have a thought or two.  Big surprise!  Numbering them, only two for now, may encourage brevity and focus.

                1. The Bible, as I read it, and I read it for guidance on such matters as this, continually encourages re-leveling the wealth playing field, in a word, re-distribution of wealth.  There . . . I have spoken a profanity.  Another socialist spotting.  From the “economics of enough” that characterizes God’s preparation of a people for freedom, to the “economics of equitable distribution” of the Promised Land and carefully crafted plans for periodic “economics of re-distribution,” to Jesus first sermon which appears to re-institute “jubilee economics,” an every fiftieth year re-distribution, to Paul’s appeal to the rich to employ “justice economics,”  to share with the poor as a matter of justice not charity, the Bible is insistent and incessant on this theme.

                 2. Inheritance, it would appear rather clearly to me, is “private welfare” little different from “public welfare.”   I served a church for twenty-three years in the fourth, now the third wealthiest zip code in the United States.  I hasten to add that, for reasons too complex to share but a delight to recall, the church was not a microcosm of that village, its members, most of whom drove some distance to church, had average incomes well below those in homes nearby the church.  Nevertheless, I logged some time in some huge and sometimes opulent homes.  As often as not, the ability to own their homes came from the success and wealth-accumulation of a generation, often two, earlier.  I am thinking of one particular visit, where a not-unfamiliar conversation unfolded.   Somehow the topic turned to a welfare bill being debated in congress, and the comments about “those on the dole” tumbled out, a predictable critique being that a “welfare culture” stifles individual initiative, responsibility-taking and self-reliance.  I kept my all too ready question within: And how is your welfare system different from that one?  A silence all the more difficult to contain when I realized that there had not been a single success story in this family since great-grandfather made his fortune.

More to come . . . enough for now.