Hillary's Class Warfare Hypocrisy

Hillary Clinton just made a bold statement - that she opposes repealing the estate tax, aka "death tax" because it is un-American. Senator Clinton's rationale is that passing earned wealth goes against the principle of America being a meritocracy. The clear implication is that the government must confiscate this wealth to force each generation to start over in our merit-based society.

Let's be clear. Every penny of the money that remains in an estate when an individual dies, unless it resides in an a tax deferred retirement account (i.e., IRA, 401(k)), has been taxed at least once. Even though the money has already been taxed for income, capital gains, or dividends, when you die the money is taxed again at exorbitant rates. For money in an IRA or 401(k), it is taxed as income, and then taxed again at the much higher estate tax rates.

Now here is the hypocrisy part of this class warfare position. Where does the money go that is confiscated by the estate tax to promote a meritocracy? Hillary and the Democrats want to use it for income and wealth redistribution. In other words, the money is taken away from the people that earned it and given to people, through entitlements and other redistribution policies, and given to people that did not earn it.

How does this support a society based on merit? Of course it does not. It is simply disingenuous language to promote an increasingly aggressive redistribution of wealth.

Here is a question to ponder. Think about the proposals for domestic policies advocated by Hillary Clinton and all of the other Democratic presidential candidates. Is there a single policy proposal that does not involve income or wealth redistribution? Is there a single domestic policy view that instead of income redistribution creatively uses the power of the government to enable success without taking money from producers and giving it non-producers? If you can think of one, then it is the exception that proves the rule.