There's a nice little diatribe in yesterday's Journal attempting to justify confiscating every last bit of people's money immediately upon their death, on the grounds that doing so is the only way for them to have any shot at happiness. Of course the arguments are ridiculous and the attempt is a complete failure, but it does serve to illustrate the demented God-complex of the letter writer.
Success Itself, Not Money, Is a Begetter of Happiness April 5, 2007; Page A11
I couldn't agree more with Arthur Brooks ("What's Wrong With Billionaires?" March 19) that money, by itself, doesn't bring happiness. Indeed, it is success that brings happiness, and money is simply an indicator of success. We have been too hard on our misunderstood billionaires, who are actually driven by a burning desire to successfully create value, not to accumulate more money. His exhibit A: the fact that most of the billionaires on the Forbes Magazine top 949 earned their own fortunes.
This is one of the primary reasons that I support a healthy estate tax. I do not want to begrudge any American the opportunity to create his or her own wealth. If that were to happen -- if most billionaires were to simply be handed their wealth -- they would not have the opportunity to create value and to, therefore, attain happiness.
And the added bonus of keeping a healthy estate tax is that we allow today's billionaires to do precisely what Mr. Brooks maintains they have the willingness to do -- give it away. In this case, they can fund the public systems, such as schools and police and public colleges, that will enable future generations of Americans to attain the kind of success that "spills opportunity and economic abundance onto all of us, directly or indirectly." And that, of course, makes them happy.
Andrea Batista Schlesinger Executive Director Drum Major Institute for Public Policy New York
Since this "person" wants to tax the estates of billionaires to such an extent that their heirs must start over from scratch, it's obvious that she believes that a "healthy estate tax" means not allowing anyone to leave anything to their loved ones. In other words, it isn't enough that these people paid millions/billions of dollars in taxes, created countless jobs, etc., while they were alive. They must be "allowed" to give anything they haven't spent to ole Uncle Sugar. This is sick. For one thing, there's nothing stopping anyone from giving all their money to the government so said government can squander it on stupid crap. This is already "allowed", so what our fair letter-writer means by "allowed" is "forced." A lovely sentiment. But she goes further, and says "an added bonus of a healthy estate tax is that we allow today's billionaires to do precisely what Mr. Brooks maintains they have the willingness to do--give it away." She seems to believe that there is some barrier to handing over money to idiots and that forcing them to hand it over is actually doing them a favor and they should be really grateful. Billionaires as a whole seem to do a pretty damn good job of giving their money away, but they seem to prefer giving it away in such a manner as they believe will most benefit humanity. And most seem to believe that handing it over to the federal government to throw at small problems to grow them into large problems is not the best use of what they've spent their lives accumulating. They put considerable effort into finding what they believe is the best use of their money, which is exactly what they should do because it is THEIR money. And if they want to leave it to a passel of their spoiled offspring, it is unquestionably their own business and they have every right to do so. And doing so might very well make their heirs happy. Ms. Schlesinger might do well to be less concerned about the emotional well-being of billionaire offspring. Unless, of course, she is the daughter of a billionaire, in which case she should concern herself less with the affairs of other billionaire offspring, and get ready to hand over her parent's fortune immediately upon her parent's death.
7:18 AM
