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Interesting enough read, but the post title is misleading. It was hardly a gift, it was an estate tax payment. Not everyone is a greedy narcissist only out fo
by cfraenkel 2y ago
Interesting enough read, but the post title is misleading. It was hardly a gift, it was an estate tax payment.
Not everyone is a greedy narcissist only out for themselves!
- Danieru 2y agoLeft does not mean gift, it's a common term which applies when politely referring to the a recipient of an inheritance.
- bombcar 2y agoLeft means a gift via inheritance, which is the exact opposite of an estate tax (it's not a gift or via inheritance, it's a tax on the value of an estate and paid before distribution).
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThey could have squandered the money or given it away. They could could have blown it on building a pyramid to house their corpse. The government is not entitled to the assets.
- chgs 2y agoThey aren’t entitled to their assets. They only have worth because of civilisation. How well do you think bill gates would survive in a mad max utopia that Randians fantasize about?
- bombcar 2y agoI was severely disappointed when I realized that, I thought some billionaire had gone nuts with https://www.treasurydirect.gov/government/public-debt-reports/gifts/ https://www.treasurydirect.gov/government/public-debt-report...
- dylan604 2y agoand in the 3 seconds it took to read you comment, the interest on the debt increased more than this "gift"
- wahern 2y agoIt takes about 30 seconds for the US National Debt clock (https://www.usdebtclock.org/ https://www.usdebtclock.org/) to tick off $1 million, so almost 2.5 days to tick off $7 billion. I'd say $7 billion covers much more than 3 seconds of interest.
- dylan604 2y agoeven in your "correct" math, your comment doesn't really improve the ridiculously small amount of moving of a needle that this would make
- sushid 2y ago"Even if I was wrong by many orders of magnitude, I'm still correct!"
- wahern 2y agoI mean... so I just noticed the "US Total Interest Paid" clock. That takes about 45 seconds to tick over $1 million, so $7 billion covers ~1% of the interest payments in a year. That seems like a sizable contribution for a single person in a country of 330 million.
- dylan604 2y agoGreat, so now all we need is another 99 people with similar donations and we could cover the interest for a year. Then you need to continue to do that every year forever because you have yet to make any movement on the principle
- 2y ago
- elzbardico 2y agoGiven the fact, as stated in the article that there are a myriad of legal ways by which millionaires and billionaires can skip paying the estate tax, it could very well have been the result of an intentional decision not to evade this by some socially-conscious dying billionaire citizen.
- rzzzt 2y agoThere is also a fair bit left after taxes: "Based on estimates of the average tax rate on estates, the February 2023 payment implied the death of someone possessing a fortune between $17.5 and $40 billion."