None dare call it class warfare

Writing in the WashPost, columnist Sebastian Mallaby demonstrates that open-mindedness for debate and discussion so characteristic of the contemporary Left:

It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.

Well: no excuse? None? Let’s press on nonetheless. Mallaby’s argument falls into two general points: lost revenue by abolishing the estate tax and the prospect of widening inequality. The first is silly and Mallaby doesn’t really expand on it past one paragraph that seems to be a harangue against all taxation that could have spawned from the Heritage Foundation:

If the abolitionists succeed, some other tax will eventually be raised to make up for the lost revenue. So which tax does Congress favor? The income tax, which discourages work? A consumption tax, which hits the poor hardest? The payroll tax, which is both anti-work and anti-poor? Really, which other tax out there is better?

None, I dare say! But as Alabama senator Jeff Sessions retorts, the death tax may be worst of all:

The list of reasons for eliminating the death tax is long. To begin with, this tax punishes thrift and saving. It tells people that it's better to spend freely during their lifetimes than to leave assets for their children and grandchildren, which will be taxed heavily by the federal government.

But this may be the most compelling reason that two-thirds of Americans think the death tax is unfair:

The death tax is double taxation. Most of the assets taxed at death have already been taxed throughout an individual's lifetime.

If the standard liberal defense against criticism of foreign policy is “don’t question my patriotism!” surely the domestic equivalent is “don’t call it class warfare!” Here’s Mallaby again:

People often remark on the perversity of popular support for estate-tax repeal. A majority wants to abolish the tax, even though only the richest 2 percent of households have ever had to pay it. Yet this shoot-your-own-foot weirdness is easily explained: Most people just don't know that, under the law's current provisions, a couple can bequeath $4 million without paying a penny to the government.

In other words: “What is wrong with you people?” In response, the Seattle Times explains the sense of the people in a divine editorial today titled “The fatally flawed inheritance tax”:

We understand that the Democratic base believes deeply that businessmen and women ought to be taxed. We think so, too. Tax their incomes for the federal treasury. Tax their spending. Tax their property at a rate that reasonably can be paid — 1 percent a year on buildings and land is all right. But a tax of 55 percent when someone dies is not reasonable. It is like being broken into and looted. Death is bad enough without amplification.

This is why the American people always tell pollsters the death tax is the most unfair one. It is not because people don't understand their economic interests. We think they have a good sense of their interests, but they also have a sense of morality. They denounce the death tax because it piles calamity upon grief, and they do not see why anyone would want to do that.

Only the Democrats.

Extra – From Decision08 - “Take it all Taxman!”: “In the entire column, Mallaby gives no good reasons why this is so, other than a distinct distaste for wealth and a love of ‘progressive’ taxation.”