For everyone, regardless of the total value of “everything else”? Without an exemption amount and/or bracketing similar to that described in the proposed initiative you’re just shifting the problem of inequality with a regressive tax.
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Sounds implausible to me.
Estate and inheritance taxes simply aren’t an issue for family farms in the USA.
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That’s not it. The correct analogy is that you pay at least a nominal fee for most things, and my thought was that this should be one of them.
@d_r had the best retort to this line of thinking. Very well thought out explanation why education should be entirely free.
Hipshot had the next-best response, raising the possibility that with free undergrad, it could just become a “standard expectation” of every job with every employer that you have to have that degree, which makes it 4 more years of public school.
I am not sure where it should come down. If anything, the BOOKS AND MATERIALS should be provided, just like they are in public school. Have you seen the cost of textbooks lately? Outrageous. That shit has to stop.
As for tuition, I think if people have means, they should pay. If they have no means, obviously much reduced or free.
What about housing? That’s a tough call. Should that be free? Then you have all college kids in government housing… I don’t know the answer to that one. My guy says you have to pay rent, like everyone over 18. But I could be convinced that a subsidy, rent sharing, or free might be a good idea. You can’t just go to college - you have to live there, if you have no family in town.
A lot of whataboutism, but these whatabouts are all related to the main topic: should CA Uni be free?
I don’t know what they are thinking. You can do a lot with 3.5 million sitting in the bank.
What bank? There is no cash. Most available cash gets tied up in next year’s crop. The bulk is assets. Mostly land and equipment. New tractors cost 500,000 and combines can be a million.
No, the obvious: sell the farm! Bank the cash. Move on, do something else with all that money to fund your new life.
Of course that’s an option from a purely business perspective. For those of us loosing a family home (since 1869) it’s not such a simple decision.
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I’m not sure it always would make sense from a business perspective, either. Selling a family farm probably eats up a lot of cash (e.g. paying off outstanding debt, selling depreciated equipment and stock, legal and accounting fees, etc.), especially if the sale is being made under duress as is so often the case. While there’s probably cash left over after a sale, I can see why someone would decide to stick it out instead, more so if there’s a sense of pride and fulfilment in the work along with family tradition.
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The tell here is the invocation of “corporate” as a catch-all bugaboo to distinguish virtuous capitalism from that nasty skullduggery involving men in 3-piece suits. But liability structure doesn’t tell you a whole lot about actual business practices; small farms may dump just as many chemicals into the ground and exploit their labor just as much–in fact, you may see worse business practices on smaller farms, because they’re harder to regulate. The other thing is, land speculation affecting the viability of farming is a real issue, but it is it’s own issue, the fact that it intersects with the estate tax is coincidental; any changes to inheritance tax aren’t going to make land less scarce or valuable.
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Sorry for the confusion. I would base that 35% on the $7 million level as in the original proposal.
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(1) Taxing inheritances to fund education is an issue
(2) Whether family farms are operated ethically is a different issue
I don’t think we should conflate them.
There is no reason that the free state university has to involve butts in seats in an auditorium, listening to a bored TA reading a script.
We could reduce the needed taxation, or spend that tax money on something else, by having a goodly chunk (or all) of that free university be online.
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I’m mainly addressing adding a moral dimension to multi-million inheritance by invoking “corporate” interests that are somehow less virtuous. And secondarily, questioning the idea that farms are these free-standing enterprises that aren’t contingent on massive state subsidy. That someone would use a corn farm as an example of purity of intentions is kinda funny, considering how commodified and controlled corn has become.
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I’d love to live in a $3.5m house too, but I wouldn’t expect to get it for free.
Why are you special?
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Yes, but we don’t decide who to tax and who not to tax based on “purity of intentions”. Or at least, we shouldn’t.
(edit - that’s why I said upthread that family farms should get the exact same treatment as any other family owned business)
He has to leave the Wu Tang album.
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The real question you need to ask yourself is, what if it actually “works”? What if they are actually able to pass this bill and somehow stop people, who understand the system well enough to amass wealth, from moving it to where they cant take it. Then they give free university degrees to everyone who wants them. You then get a massive influx of students to the towns around these free institutions and then you have a huge gentrification problem. not to mention the fact that the university is free but the students now live in racket ball court cooling ducts because they cant afford housing. So I guess we raise the tax on the dead millionaires a little more to give them free housing. This will now create a stronger incentive to move to California from the rest of the US to study. We will stop heading down that deep, dark rabbit hole for a second and deal with what value will this “free” “education” have for the students and society at large. Don’t we have massive amounts of highly “educated” kids running around not abel to find a job in the field they studied in today? Are HR departments not flooded with Masters waving applicants by the thousands already? Does this not dilute most of the value in that diploma? Why are we doing this again?
But I digress and get back to your original question. “Will this actually work?”.
No
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Would that I could upvote this 10^10 times.
