So millions in term insurance is okay freed from federal taxes BUT the wealth you built your entire life should be taxed at 50% in your opinion? I am a bit confused with that line of thinking. My wife does work. She works with autistic children performing home based care. Your assuming wealth transfer equals spoiling. You sir/maam would be incorrect in that assumption. Clearly you are a socialist and I am not. Thats okay. We can still have a polite conversation without some childish emoticons, no?
I haven't placed great thought on it. But how about the family gets the lesser of: 500K each family member, or the entire family gets 50% of the diseased's estate. What's left over goes to the government. I don't have statistics, but usually, the kid doesn't do as well as the parent. An example is the Kennedys. People in this forum who know me would disagree that I'm a socialist because I am very anti-Obama and anti-Democrat. Also, even people on the right have differing opinions on individual issues. When it comes to porn, I believe the government needs to stay away. Those emoticons are part of my freedom of speech. No?
Not sure if you were kidding or not, but since you guys seem to be carrying on a decent conversation, including emoticons, I thought I might just add a bit. You build a family in the same way you build a business. By working with your kids while alive to understand money and work, and all the ramifications of both, your family has a better chance of long term success. Warren Buffet, I know everyone likes to quote him, but he said this well. Leave them enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they would do nothing. I don't think estate taxes are right, especially at such high rates. You have already paid taxes on that money. And I believe in super estate planning where you can limit the amounts if need be. Since wealth is a subjective term, each would decide how much to leave their kids or grandkids. Some may think a lump sum of $250K is good, some may say $2mil, some may say only $2k per month, again depending on circumstances. However, I don't think any of this is socialism per my education in that regard. c