[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Karma Police

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?

Certainly people who didn't earn the money don't inherently deserve it. However, this is a moral issue and I don't think the government has a right to take the money for that particular reason. A person can give their money to anyone (while they're alive) without being hit with an estate tax, right? Why should it be different for money given to others after they die? Although the children didn't earn the money, their parents did and their parents have the right to give it to whoever they want, including their children. That may not be great parenting, but it's only fair to let people decide what happens to the money they earned.

Originally Posted by Karma Police

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.

I didn't mean that as a sweeping stereotype of every poor person (although that's probably how it came out), but rather in the sense that Doku said -- that in general, poor people are poor because they're not financially educated/savvy. For example, if you give a poor person a million dollars it'll be gone very quickly because they don't know how to manage that kind of money (happens a lot to lottery winners). The reason they don't have it in the first place is the same reason they'd quickly lose it if you gave it to them.

Originally Posted by Karma Police

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.

People born into wealthy families have just as much of a chance of losing all their inherited money as poor people who win the lottery (and I bet that happens sometimes). The difference seems to be that wealthy families educate their children differently about how to handle money. This is what I gather from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and what Count Doku said.