The only Good Death Tax Is a Dead Death Tax

Just before the end of the year, I shared some fascinating research about people dying quicker or living longer when there are changes in the death tax. Sort of the ultimate Laffer Curve response, particularly if it’s the former.

But the more serious point is that the death tax shouldn’t exist at all, as I’ve explained for USA Today. And in this CNBC debate, I argue that it is an immoral form of double taxation.

You’ll see that Jared sneakily tries to include wealth taxes and death taxes together in order to accuse me of an inaccuracy, but the chart (click to enlarge) clearly shows that there are many jurisdictions that wisely avoid this anti-competitive levy.

The data is a few years old, but it’s clear that the United states has one of the most punitive death tax systems in the world.

Unfortunately, this is a good description of many parts of our tax system. We also have the world’s highest corporate tax rate and we also have very high tax burdens on dividends and capital gains (and the tax rates on both just got worse thanks to the fiscal cliff legislation).

But probably the key difference between us is that Jared genuinely thinks government should be bigger and that the tax burden should be much higher.

Though I will give him credit. Not only does he want class-warfare tax hikes, such as a higher death tax, but he openly admits he wants to rape and pillage the middle class as well.

Not surprisingly, I argue that more revenue in Washington will exacerbate the real problem of a federal government that is too big and spending too much.

P.S. Here’s a cartoon that is only funny if you don’t think too deeply about what it means.

P.P.S. You’ll notice that the video in this post has good quality, unlike the fuzzy resolution and discontinuous footage in clips I’ve recently shared. That’s because Cato’s expert on such things is back in the office and we’re no longer relying on my sub-par technical knowledge.

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Question of the Week: “Take the Quiz and Tell Us How Libertarian You Are?”

For five consecutive weekends, I responded to your “questions of the week.”

That involved queries about my views on when the monetary system will begin to unravel, whether I hated Republicans, what I thought about Senator Jim DeMint moving over to the Heritage Foundation, the degree to which the media is biased, and if my opinions have changed on any issues.

But last weekend, I got too wrapped up in other topics and neglected to answer any of the questions I received. So I’ll try to compensate by answering one question today and another tomorrow.

Today’s query actually is a request, not a question: “Take the Quiz and Tell Us How Libertarian You Are?”

At first I thought this was going to be a request to take the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, put together by the Advocates for Self Government.

And that would have been an easy test since it involves only 10 questions. I’ve done if before and I’m a pure libertarian.

But the reader instead sent me the much more detailed test put together by Professor Bryan Caplan of George Mason University.

This means answering 64 questions, though it doesn’t actually take that long to complete.

The good news is that I got a 94, which sounds close to perfect.

The bad news is that the maximum score is 160, so I obviously fell far short of libertarian purity.

But even a 94 makes me a very unusual person. According to Professor Caplan’s grading system, I’ve “entered the heady realm of hard-core libertarianism.

If you want to know why I got what appears to be a modest grade, it’s because the test basically measures whether you’re an anarcho-capitalist. And as I confessed back in 2011, when sharing this funny video poking fun at libertarianism, I’ve never been able to rationalize how to get rid of all government.

From an ideological perspective, I’d like to think that we could privatize courts, police, and national defense. But I just don’t see how the market would fill those roles.

So, yes, I’m a squish. But whenever anarcho-capitalists give me a hard time, I tell them that we should work together to get rid of 90 percent of government. Then we can squabble about what to do with the remaining 10 percent.

P.S. Since I shared the funny anti-libertarian video, I may as well share these other examples of humor targeting me and my fellow travelers.

• Two cartoons, one on libertarian ice fishing and the other showing libertarian lifeguards.
• A montage showing 24 types of libertarians.
• Six different perceptions of libertarians.

And since sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander, here’s some libertarian-produced humor mocking statists.

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