

How Did the Deaths of Four People Cost the U.S. Government $6.5 Billion? - cwan
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/how-did-the-deaths-of-four-people-cost-the-u-s-government-6-5-billion/

======
sielskr
When I saw "the Deaths of Four People Cost the U.S. Government $6.5 Billion" I
imagined the government taking 6.5 billion from taxpayers and spending it
extremely inefficiently. But I am not a journalist living in New York City (if
the blogger wrote the headline or an editor for the New York Times if an
editor wrote the headline of the blog post)! What the headline is really
talking about is the government's _failing to collect_ death taxes that it
could have collected if Congress had voted differently.

So apparently according to this journalist every time the government fails to
collect X dollars that it could have collected through the legitimate
operation of elections, Congressional votes, etc, that failure "costs" the
government X dollars. I am having trouble escaping the implication that the
headline writer believes that any money that Congress could have voted to
collect _rightfully belongs_ to the government, and if the money remains in
private hands, maybe that is worth a blog post in the New York Times!

~~~
jbooth
Hi, can we please stop using the phrase "death tax"? It's called estate tax.
Legally. Calling it a death tax does not change any of the underlying
mechanics or reasons to support/oppose it.

Signed, George Orwell

~~~
sielskr
Sure, but I did it because the OP did it. Also, there's a good chance that
Orwell would have just as much of a problem with "estate tax" as with "death
tax", "estate tax" being the choice of people with an agenda after all.

~~~
jbooth
It's taxing estates, not deaths. Every other tax is named after what it taxes.
Income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax.. get the picture?

And that person with an agenda was Teddy Roosevelt who implemented it almost
100 years ago, back in simpler times when the lying in politics was mostly
about people's mothers' moralities and lineages.

~~~
eru
There was lots of corruption back in the day.

------
forgotAgain
Really poor title for the NY Times. The deaths didn't cause the government to
lose money. It's not the government's money to begin with, it's the property
of the people who died.

It's distressing to see the country's premier newspaper resort to linkbait.

~~~
brown9-2
Is it really link bait?

The amounts in question are tax revenue that the government would have
collected in other years which were not collected this year due to the one-
year-only-exemption.

How is missed revenue opportunity not lost money?

The question comes down to semantics of how you interpret a missed chance at
revenue, we can probably leave the question of the fairness of the inheritance
tax out of it (for now).

~~~
forgotAgain
The tax code is what it is. The deaths of the four people did not cause the
government to lose the money. The structure of the tax code did.

~~~
brown9-2
Dubner's point here is that the _timing_ of the deaths did in fact cause the
government to miss out on some tax revenue. I agree he's being a bit cute
about the wording, but it is just a blog post - not a NYTimes cover news
story. He's trying to make a point about the quirks and odd facets (some might
call them ridiculous) of our tax code.

~~~
spinlock
Or, maybe not. You see, this year, you not only get to avoid the death tax but
you also miss out on the step-up in tax basis. So, you can pass assets down to
your heirs tax free but they then have a much larger tax bill if they ever
realize the gains on those assets.

------
Semiapies
And meanwhile, the government spent over a _trillion_ dollars more in FY 2009
than it had received in revenue.

Over half of government spending is in three areas that _will not_ be touched
by members of either party: Defense, Social Security, and Medicare & Medicaid.

Whining about the loss of a piddly $6.5 billion one year is like going on
about cutting pork or "waste" - a demonstration that one wants to appeal to
peoples' anxieties about unsustainable government spending while being utterly
uninterested in doing anything about the problem.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget>

------
TGJ
When the death of a citizen benefits the government, the citizen should seek
the death of the government.

The government is supposed to be for the benefit of the citizen not the other
way around.

~~~
khafra
When the death of a citizen benefits his heirs, should the citizen seek the
death of his heirs?

~~~
TGJ
You are not forced to give your inheritance to your children. You are forced
to give it to the government. That's why your rephrasing does not work.

