[Karma Police]

Doku,

I don't get your last comment. How is applying the estate tax to everyone going full circle to eliminate it? I'm a fairly smart guy, but I'm not following you.

Baltar,

You said:

"Wealthy people did something right to get to where they are, and poor people are doing something wrong. Taxing wealthy people more just because they have more money is equivalent to compensating for incompetence of poor people by punishing the success that the wealthy have achieved."

I've been talking about the estate tax, which doesn't tax the "wealthy people" who did something right, it taxes the wealthy people's children who did nothing "right" to generate the wealth that's being passed to them. Are you suggesting that the children of wealthy people are somehow more inherently deserving of having wealth than the children of poor people?

Also, I think it's far too simplistic to say that poor people are poor because they are doing something wrong and deserve to be poor. Often, the main thing they've done wrong is being born to the "wrong" nation, neighborhood, or family.

Yes, I understand it's possible for someone to be born into poverty, work hard and achieve financial success. But, there are several other factors that come into play, such as intelligence, a supportive family, inherited personality traits, etc. From personal observation, I believe it's much easier for someone of average intelligence to be a "success" if the person is born into an upper middle class family instead of a lower income family. I'm not making excuses for anyone, but I don't think it's fair to "blame" someone for conditions they didn't create.