I get where you’re coming from, but I think if you include the sweat equity of getting a good education into the equation, even “free” isn’t free. As long as standards stay high, and if you flunk out you flunk out, then it isn’t “free” in that sense you’re talking about, since you have to work for it.
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There are many government policies that benefit corporate agribusiness and discourage family farming, or push it to the margins. Yet whenever some progressive policy idea comes up, oh, boy, here come the Republicans to talk about the horrible impact on the dear, beloved family farmer!
It’s almost like they want it to be that way.
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no one is taking my idea seriously, a 5 year high school that includes either an AA (2 years junior college courses) or 2 years of trade/technical training.
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I assume you’re unfamiliar with the concept of ‘paying it forward’?
A zero-fees degree isn’t a no-strings-attached gift. The expectation is that you will do something with it - practice law, teach children, cure cancer, or write the next great American novel. Either way you are contributing more to society than you would have otherwise, be it in tangible - and therefore taxable - benefits, or intangibles. You are thus contributing to the next generation of students. They aren’t stealing from you; you’re providing for them.
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Sometimes, “assets” is not the same as wealth. Not everyone has a bunch of lawyers on call to make sure that your farm or business is exempt. The people who can afford to avoid the tax are likely the same people who could survive paying it. For a bunch of people, it would mean that keeping the family farm in the family is conditional on paying the government a bill so high that the only way to pay it is to heavily mortgage the property, or sell parcels off to developers. The whole concept seems to be based on envy. Most of the people being described as Aristocrats are really more like Kulaks. Scapegoats for the rage that should be directed at hedge fund managers and pharma bros.
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I like to think of it as giving trickle-down economics a little shove to finally get things going in the right direction.
I’m sure a lot is rage, but again, there are also good, cold socioeconimoc reasons not to allow large, untaxed wealth transfers between generations. It’s the very building block of aristocracy, and land is the classic form of wealth. They’re not called The Landed Gentry for nothing.
It does seem somehow sad to imagine a farmer losing the family farm to developers and corporations - the two great evils of radio plays and 80s movies - but I can’t think of a good reason why it’s more sad than any other leveraged-asset/infrastructire-based wealth “lost” beyond pastoral nostalgia (in many cases built more on fantasy than reality). And this coming from a person who grew up playing and helping out on my grandparents fading dairy farm in Maine.
of course, if you want to argue that farmed land has a special social value because of food production, sure, that makes sense. However, if a tax break is negotiated on that basis and the inheritors get a tax break, then do just sell the land off to developers anyway, they should have to not only pay the inheritance tax with interest, there should be a punitive tax just for breaking pa’s heart.
As for not having lawyers hanging around, didn’t at least one runt of the litter get fed up with small town life and escape to become a lawyer in the big city, just to spite her folks? In all seriousness though, a good-sized farm with no legal planning and relying on a simple transfer via will, that also relies heavily on family labor sounds a lot like a shady, insufficiently managed business rife with nepotism.
I won’t go full Marx and suggest that an alternate plan would be to sell shares in the farm to the worlers and create a workers’ collective before the death of the noble patriarch (although I kinda just did) and I do truly hope that sweat-equity businesses aren’t treated the same as passively gained wealth. I am sure that a bill like this won’t make it past America’s obsession with farmers without a carveout.
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4,000 Californians would be subject to the tax, and the 2.6 million students in the California systems would benefit from it.
I think you meant: “4,000 dead Californians would be subject to the tax…”
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Higher ed in California first rose to its current excellence at a time when it was free at every level (there were some nominal fees, but no tuition). People who benefited from their education then appreciate it at least as much as students do today.
Since this is my business, it is a conversation I have had a lot. Here are just a few reasons tuition should be free (aside from the obvious issues the status quo has where tuition becomes a way to funnel future earnings into the pockets of bankers):
If tuition was free, we could kill that toxic attitude that students are “customers” whose degrees were bought and paid for.
If tuition was free, university administrators wouldn’t put departments in competition with one another to attract students just for the student-semester hours. Departments would get funded based on centrality to campus mission, not popularity.
If tuition was free, legislatures would stop chastising universities for not paying for themselves.
If tuition was free, faculty could give more honest grades and not worry about angry calls from the chief financial officer about retention.
If tuition was free, campuses that can’t afford Division I athletics could drop it and not worry about no longer attracting out-of-state students, and underprepared student-athletes who often take rubbish majors so that they can maintain eligibility could take more challenging courses and not worry about losing their scholarship.
If tuition at the 4-year institutions was free, there wouldn’t be artificial incentives for students planning a 4 year degree to take as many nonremedial credits as possible at community college then transfer, and the CCs could focus their energy and resources on providing a wide selection of quality trades/associates degrees, and on remediation.
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Wow!!! Super response!!!
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Landed gentry are a class of people who could live an aristocratic lifestyle from the labor of tenants.
I have neighbors who would be targeted by this tax who live in crappy a-frames and drive 20 year old pickups.
What is missing here is that quite a lot of building a business or farm is a multi generational effort. It certainly is in our case. People are willing to work the land for their whole lives because of the knowledge that the trees they plant will mature when their great grandchildren work the same land.
Farms become worth millions primarily because of the real estate market. Someone builds a retirement mansion a few miles away, and suddenly your appraised value goes up. And your taxes double. Your income does not increase, of course. It is potential wealth, which you can only access once you mortgage or sell. I have to think it is the same for any small business where the profit margins are tiny.
This whole concept disincentivizes frugality and long-term land stewardship.
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Reminds me of the “common sense” Republican need for all people, even the most poor, to pay taxes. Somehow it ennobles them. As they get to choose between food, heat, or shelter.
Resist the urge to punish poor people for their condition.
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Anyone who thinks this has any chance of working has no idea how finance works. But then again it is the same people who think that the fruit of someone’s labor, after already being taxed, is not theirs to do with as they wish and deserve.
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Reasoned, pragmatic, and open minded thought based on empirical observation and research instead of emotions like envy and defeatism? What were you thinking?
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Wouldn’t it be trivial to make an exception to the rule for farms, in particular? Since you have to pay taxes on what you make on the farm, you can easily differentiate between land that you rent out (or hold as investment), and land that you work yourself. You pay the inheritance tax on the former, and the threshold can be moved to a larger value on the latter.
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If you have rental income, that gets taxed too, you know, just as if you plowed the fields yourself.
It would make more sense to have no inheritance tax on income-producing fixed assets (farmland, real estate, equipment, business inventories … for all businesses which are generating taxable income) and a 35% tax on everything else (residential housing, investments, personal property, cash).
That is my sentiment exactly. And I agree that there is no difference between a family owned farm and a family owned chain of dry cleaners.
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Great point, and many of the soak-the-rich measures of previous years eventually wind up soaking the upper middle class. Which is okay if it’s made clear up front, but not if it sneaks in the back door.
I’m guessing you mean this as a parody, and as such, it’s perfect.
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I think you overestimate what a 3.5 million/7 million dollar farm looks like. That could easily be a one man operation barely scraping by
