@Negat0ry, if you know we used to have tax rates that high, then you also know that nearly no one actually paid taxes at those rates. Or if you don't, then you just consumed a "fact" and regurgitated the sound byte. So I don't know why you referenced it other than to imply that you think increasing taxes on billionaires will solve all our woes. I'll spare you the suspense though, it won't. And for many reasons. I'll give you two practical ones. First, mostly because the amount of "money" you think billionaires possess is actually tied up in capital assets - things that produce income or enable other people to be productive (factories, websites, logistics facilities, buildings, digital networks, communication infrastructure, supercomputers, etc). The second reason, and most important one, is there just isn't enough juice to squeeze from them. Meaning, if you confiscated all the wealth of all the billionaires it wouldn't cover the fiscal outlays and promises our government has made. Those are practical reasons. Those are mathematical reasons. Those are logical reasons. Those are reasons you should be able to buy into regardless of your political affiliation. I won't try to convince you that there are additional moral reasons you shouldn't confiscate wealth, but it'd be a waste of time - not only because you come from a different moral and ethical perspective, but because it doesn't matter on a practical basis - we can't get there from where we are. Your suggestion (assumed solution) won't work for practical (mathematical) reasons. Which, by the way, is why I think you promulgate a moral position. Yes dude, I believe that people should be able to stay rich forever. And honestly so do you. You don't think you do though, because you can't (or haven't) conceive of a world in which money keeps it's value and relative wealth means relatively less. I mean seriously dude, do you honestly think that every generation should start from zero? Like what's the point from a humanity-centered perspective to force individuals to have to suffer and grind from square one? I suspect you'd say "fairness" and "opportunity." I want fairness and opportunity in our country for everyone as well. Those are two things I think you and I would agree on, and I'm sure we just disagree about the mechanism, and honestly, that comes from just a different fact-pattern that you and I see. Problem is though, you have a math problem to address. You can moralize about it all you want, but the numbers don't work. You are right in that the $30 (15) million dollar exclusion is a lot of money, and you're also right that the crux of the problem doesn't lie in a few 'outlier' farmers who are able to pass on their $100M dollar farms to their heirs. Rather, the core problem is much broader and more subtle than that. The problems we have are all underneath the surface, and exist in ways most of us never think of or pause to consider - i.e. the wealth transfer mechanism that is social security, wherein it transfers my present day wages to the sons and daughters of people who bought homes in the 1960s and 1970s. Boomers, who are consuming end-of-life care and consuming dollars which my labor produced. These people should be putting their homes on the market in order to generate the 'income' they need to eat and to pay for their medical care. Instead, the government provides them with income and medical care (from me), and then when they die, their kids inherit many millions of dollars - much of it being MY MONEY. So in some cases it functions purely as a pass-thru mechanism from one set of people (produces) to another (consumers). I think you would agree that is an unintended and let's just say, sub-optimal, outcome of SS. I point at something like this because it's but one of an innumerable set of problems and dynamics which when they operate at scale, create all the problems you and I lament. You want a solution, and so do I - I respect that. You just haven't identified the problem yet.
