Death To The Death Tax

Leaving aside the universally-loathed (by taxpayers) the tax on wages (misnamed the “income” tax), the most unpopular piece of governmental theft is that of the inheritance tax.  And with good reason.

In the not-too-distant past, inheritance taxes were the only stream of tax revenue which actually cost more to collect than the revenue thus obtained.  (In 2005, as I recall, the cost of collection per dollar was $1.07, and prior to that it went as high as $1.13, before the IRS — with the willing aid of Congress — “improved” their tax collection ratio simply by disallowing many of the cutouts and exceptions.)

But what’s interesting about these taxes is that they were hated even by Americans who would never pay a dime after their parents passed away — the implicit unfairness of the tax’s rationale that the inheritor never “earned” that inheritance, and therefore it was “unfair” and should be redistributed confiscated by the State, was understood by everyone to be total bullshit (born of pure Socialist wealth envy).

Now try this little piece of bastardy, courtesy of President Braindead’s handlers:

Democrats in Congress have made no secret of their desire to slip all sorts of tax hikes into the various massive legislative packages that have thus far (thankfully) remained bogged down in the Senate. They would like to see a significant increase in the gas tax to pay for the liberal wish list known as “infrastructure.” There’s also a continued push for a so-called “wealth tax” on people who are considered by the Dems’ socialist wing to have “too much money.” But one of the most controversial of these plans is the call to greatly expand the inheritance tax, more correctly known as the death tax. However, describing it as either an expansion or an increase isn’t accurate. The New York Post took a look at the plan this week and revealed that what they really want to do is create an entirely new category of taxation for the estates of the deceased, treating the transfer of assets to survivors as a capital gains event.

And it gets better:

For those of you who are thinking that this is “somebody else’s problem” because it only applies to the rich and famous, think again. If you’ve ever read Thomas Stanley’s 2010 bestseller, “The Millionaire Next Door,” you probably understand how this works. If you work throughout most of your life, put money away into any sort of retirement plans, and own your own home, you can break the millionaire barrier without too much trouble by the time you are in your sixties. No, not everyone in the middle class manages it, but this applies to a lot more people than you might think.
If you are fortunate enough to live for a very long time after you retire, you may burn through a fair bit of that wealth. But if you unfortunately only make it to somewhere around the national American average life expectancy, in your mid-70s or even late-60s, you could still be sitting on a tidy sum to help your family along. But nearly 80% of that wealth would evaporate under Biden’s new scheme.

And to reiterate:

Good luck figuring out the arguments in favor of a system of governmental robbery like this. Aside from envy and a desire to eat the rich or “redistribute” everything, there aren’t many. But one of the most compelling arguments  against this capital gains concept is that we would be treating wealth held in individual estates the same as income. And all of that money and value  has already been taxed. Every estate tax represents a case of double taxation on the same income via renaming the fingers coming to pick your pockets. Don’t let them get away with it. Estate taxes should be repealed, not effectively doubled.

This would be my suggestion to stop them getting away with this new kind of theft, but no doubt someone will have a problem with it.

One More Reason Not To

Let’s just go through the catalogue of ways to die in Australia:

  • dingoes which eat babies
  • brown snakes
  • funnel-web spiders
  • sharks
  • saltwater crocodiles
  • Sydney traffic
  • unchecked, uncontrollable bush fires
  • box jellyfish
  • blue-ringed octopus
  • its cousin, the blue-lined octopus
  • stonefish
  • Australian paralysis tick
  • and so many more

Now we can add mouse plagues to this list:

At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds of scratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.” Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
The plague is a cruel blow to farmers in Australia´s most populous state who have been battered by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years, only to face the new scourge of the introduced house mouse.

And of course, plagues of mice sometimes result in follow-up plagues of… you guessed it, snakes, which treat this as some kind of Roman orgy of gluttony, and not only gorge themselves but create still more snakes to take advantage of the bounty.

Predictably, this mouse plague is being met with customary Aussie ingenuity and just as predictably, activities like this are being greeted with horror by the Usual Suspects (almost all of whom, of course, live in areas untouched by the mouse plague):

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on Tuesday pleaded with farmers not to kill ‘curious animals’ that are ‘just looking for food to survive’.
‘They shouldn’t be robbed of that right because of the dangerous notion of human supremacy,’ PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said.

“Human supremacy”, eh?  We should also drop this bunch of rodents into drowning pits and fire barrels.

As a lad, I used to enjoy hunting for mice in the fields nearby our house, armed with my trusty Diana air rifle, but I think my best day only yielded a dozen or so.  This Oz thing is something else altogether.

Still Incommunicado

Sorry, folks… this is what you get when your apartment complex gives the sole contract to AT&T… resounding silence to my request for assistance.  (And don’t say “satellite”, because guess who owns DirecTV?)

Anyway, I have a few moments to write some stuff, and I’ll do so in a moment.  Regular programming should resume In’shallah when AT&T deigns to give it back to me.

Still Not In

…as the actress said to the bishop.

Well, our furniture and most of our stuff is back in the apartment.  Have we been able to do anything with it?

Nooooooooo because the place is still not habitable (minor construction yet to be done, drywalling, electricity etc., no fridge and most importantly, no working toilets or indeed water from the faucets).  So as I write this, we’re still stuck in the Fleabagge Inn, now living out of suitcases and moving boxes (because we packed them, expecting to have moved by now).  Oh, and our “temporary housing” allowance from the insurance company has ended, so it’s all been out of pocket since just before the beginning of the month.

All this, plus the theft of the guns and the resulting cancellation of the Boomershoot trip has given me an attack of the gloomies.

The only good thing that’s happened to us is that thanks to the generosity of her family, New Wife is heading back to Seffrica early next month to visit with  friends and family, and most especially, to meet the brand-new granddaughter.  I, however, will be staying behind (because a. I can’t afford to go and b. I really don’t feel a desire to go back there).  But we will be apart, the first time since we got married, and for two weeks withal.

Please bear with me as I pull the covers over my head and growl miserably.

Kim’s Hell

This is what happens when I get curious about stuff and set out to explore.

Last week, I read that former Spain- and Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas (one of the best goalies ever, btw) has divorced his journototty wife Sara:

…and moved to a “Japanese-style” penthouse in La Finca.

Where dat?

Not being familiar with Spain, I eventually found out that it’s a swanky suburb of Madrid.  (I should also mention that I caught the giggles because I first read “Finca” as “Fica” — the Italian slang for “pussy” — but I recovered and went on.)

I should have stopped upon learning that La Finca was a Madrid suburb.  But noooo, I had to see what it looks like.  Casilla’s penthouse apartment (see here) should have given me a clue, but when I DuckDucked it, I saw stuff like this… endless examples of foul glass and concrete boxes modernity:

       

I could go on, but I think you get the drift.  (If you want to see bigger pictures — gawd help you — just DuckDuck “La Finca Madrid”.)

As a rule, I quite like traditional Spanish architecture — especially the Catalonian style:

 

…and as for apartments and public buildings:

 

Compared to those, La Finca Horrible doesn’t even come close:

I think I need to look at something beautiful, just to recover from that hideousness.  Here’s Paz Vega:

Now that’s some classic Spanish architecture for you.