Revisit collection of inheritance tax

Marvin Adelman, Las Vegas

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

The primary ingredients of democracy are compromise and fairness, neither of which do we have at this time. The lack of compromise this past summer by politicians, namely the Tea Party members of Congress, really threw cold water in a lot of people’s faces. Once again, the Republican Party refuses to allow fair taxation of the wealthiest in our society. It’s no wonder that people are demonstrating.

We need to recognize that the country has to grow up. We will not have more people working unless we spend a substantial amount of money on job stimulus coupled with a renewed education movement. Both of these initiatives require substantial funding. A small part of this can come from fair taxation. What’s really needed is a substantial and meaningful inheritance tax. Our form of democracy allows people who are lucky and smart enough to make enormous amounts of money. That’s fine. However, once their lifetime is over, our country needs those funds to balance out the needs of our society and way of life.

We cannot continue the way we are going, so the reality is that either we act in a fair manner to everyone, or what we are witnessing with Occupy Wall Street will become a growing movement. Societies throughout the world have to come to grips with these issues. If they are not addressed in a responsible manner, then the result will be chaos and the end of our society as we know it.