...Who don't understand what things cost, how taxes work or reality scenarios. $1,000,000 is way too low. Let's collectively pretend our heads aren't firmly stuck in our assholes for a second and take a look at it in terms of small businesses.

A guy owns a business. That business's value can be $1 at the time that the company is formed but as soon as its been valuated, that value is now accounted for. This will often happen in the case of venture capital or other transactions that require some form of valuation. So now this guy owns a company that does $5 mil rev/year. During a capital injection he sells 50% of that equity establishing a value for the enterprise at $5 mil. He now owns 50% of that equity, valued at $2.5 mil. He dies. His children inherit that equity.

I have to look at the wording of the bill but there's tons and tons and tons of situations where on paper you're receiving "sums of money" in excess of $1 million but the liquid capital is far, far less. Any business that has machinery is a good example. If I inherit a tractor and have to pay 55% taxes on the value of that tractor, where the fuck am I supposed to get the money from? Selling the tractor? Well that's fine when I'm the only person involved but when its a small company that company now goes out of business. It's also fine when there's a strong market for tractors but what about when we're talking about things like intangibles where the market might be entirely non-existent.

This isn't even about wealth distribution, this is about out and out fucking the middle class. And by middle class I don't mean working class people who have white collar jobs, I mean the literal middle class. Meaning people who own small businesses and entrepreneurs who aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination but still have a book value over your typical Joe. Only, in order to access that money they have to sell it off which isn't as easy as hopping on Ebay and dropping an ad.

This is why I can't stand people in general. They're stupid. They don't realize that so many of the people in this country work for people who own LLC's and operate in an income range or legal situation that treats the company for all intents and purposes as the person. As a result tax measures and changes don't help "the little guy", it just gets "the little guy" fired. So a bunch of idiots are happy that they're "fucking over white anglo saxons leaving inheritances" when in reality they're the ones who are going to lose their jobs and be preordained to a working class, paycheck to paycheck fate. This is why I say we shouldn't value the opinions of people who don't have at least some cursory understanding of the impact of law and the vast, vast majority of people don't. I'm not an expert either but at least I have some practical experience that opens my eyes to a bit of perspective.

And the funny part is when I mention that we should teach taxation in school people give me shit about how its not relevant to education. It absolutely is. The law, taxes, legal system, etc are what you need to understand to not sound like an asshole when you talk politics. That's also why they'll never teach people it, they're much happier with a bunch of drooling idiots that base their opinions on fucking Disney cartoons rather than morality, ethics and understanding of the term consequence.

That's the end of my rant. Fin.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2010 03:25AM by Death_Claw.