Winning the Genetic Lottery

One of the best examples of our society's deranged priority structure is the amount of ink and breath wasted each year on "repealing the death tax". The "death tax" is a semantic construct of Republican spinsters who have managed to motivate working-class Americans to rally behind the cause of helping multi-millionaire heirs and heiresses secure a tax-free inheritance. For all the disingenuous attempts to paint the "death tax repeal" as a security net that will rescue dairy farms and ma-and-pa hardware stores from bankruptcy, this perennial debate is really about ensuring that people like Paris Hilton don't have to pay ANY taxes on the tens of millions worth of assets they inherit. In general, these individuals have done little or nothing to earn the fortune which is being foisted upon them.....other than being conveniently passed through the loins of nobility at birth. And for this alleged contribution to society, "death tax" critics want the rest of us to be taxed at a higher rate for our hard-earned labors so that genetic lottery winners can pay no tax on what is given to them. Misplaced priorities in a time of war and increasing maldistribution of resources? Ya think?

What is most galling about America's children of privilege is that most are incapable of even noticing the advantages that their upbringing has given them. With the rhetoric of wealth-pampering Republican lawmakers guiding them, the George W. Bushes of American life are able to follow a career timeline that begins at age 40 when they're finally bored with being a frat boy, and then steadfastly profess to earning their bounty through "hard work and determination". Fortunes are almost exclusively built by "crony searches" on Pappy's rolodex, allowing them to take advantage of resources not available to 99.5% of Americans while still asserting that their "hard work" should be rewarded by further rounds of tax cuts and regulation rollbacks.....not to mention lectures to struggling working-class families that "you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps LIKE I DID!", or better yet cries of "class warfare" whenever said struggling families question the value of legislation designed to further enrich people like George W. Bush and Paris Hilton at the expense of other priorities.

Of course, a broader theme can be applied to this argument regarding the global distribution of resources. Seeing news footage this weekend of the carnage following the massive earthquake in Indonesia reminds us that even the poorest Americans have already "won the genetic lottery" compared to at least 80% of the world living in far less hospitable conditions. While it certainly does us good to count our blessings about how good even the least financially endowed Americans have it, going too far with that argument plays right into the hands of the multinational corporate fat cats who would love nothing more than guilt-ridden American working people readily forfeiting their union jobs so that rice farmers from rural China can manufacture widgets for 30 cents an hour in Shanghai. The end result there: the Chinese workers are marginally better off but still dirt-poor, the standards of living for American workers declines, and the major beneficiaries are the same deep-pocketed children of privilege constantly whining about being overtaxed and overregulated.

It is much more difficult to address inequality across the globe than it is here in America. Certainly there is a need to keep an incentive for entrepreneurs to do their thing, but even in the 1950s when the top tax rate was 90% and labor costs were infinitely higher in real dollars than they are today, entrepreneurs were making money and expanding a robust American economy. They were also able to secure that their chickenhawk sons didn't have to fight in the "poor man's war" when they came of age. The same opportunities will be available to children of privilege today without another raid on the Federal Treasury that ensures Junior's inheritance escapes taxation. It's funny how America has never clung to the idea of a privileged nobility the way most of our Western peers have, yet we're more likely that nations that have monarchies to believe our wealthy elites have a birthright entitlement to a whole different set of rules than the peasants surrounding the figurative castles.