You can explain how things work until you're blue in the face but it's not very effective if there's someone who's perfectly happy to lie, whether implicitly or (increasingly) explicitly. An awkward fact about propaganda and publicity campaigns is that the people who are articulating them don't necessarily need to believe in them, or even have others believe in them (though that helps). Professing the belief publicly can be an effective social signal for recognizing and cooperating with peers, as wella s identifying antagonists - think of the delight some political actors have in 'triggering' those with whom they disagree. One does not need to care about the issue oneself; political currency can be made out of simply upsetting other people, for both identification and entertainment purposes.

I do acknowledge the massive PR campaign on this front making things confusing for people. I have my doubts about it being effective in itself. There feels like a baseline assumption (stuff like "well it's my stuff" or "taxes are annoying") that end up getting re-inforced through those campaigns.

Maybe the real solution is nuking every op-ed page of the face of the planet.

Didn't mean to repeat myself bthere but it's only a matter of time before we see op-eds about small content farmers being forced off their domains by the estate tax. Might have to start a satirical Twitter account to fulminate about it.

>As of 2021, only estates valued at $11.70 million or more are subject to federal estate tax.

No sympathy for people who think that sort of windfall from their parents should somehow be untouchable.

It's actually $11.7 million now.

Oh it's much, much worse than that. The Trump tax "cuts" actually doubled the Federal estate tax thresholds to ~$11m for a singled person and ~$22m for married couples.

> - If you live in the home it is exempted

So I actually have a bit of a problem with this because generally real estate passes to beneficiaries of the estate on a stepped up basis. The idea is for children not to be saddled with a huge tax debt but there has to be limits to this.

> ... amazing failure of describing how a thing works

I see it from the somewhat opposite view and that is that conservatives in the US at least are so easily manipulated to the point where a seemingly large portion of them now believe democracy isn't working for them and you see this bubbling over at incidents like the attempted insurrection of Jan 6.

It's downright ironic that the reddest states are actually the most Federally dependent and the democracy that supposedly isn't working for them is a system that gives such states political power far in excess of their population such that a political party can in many places hold power with ~40% of the vote.

That $11m or $22m was already taxed and the person who earned it paid the government an unusually large sum of money for the privilege of being successful. Why should they get to double dip? The government taxes everything you earn, all the interest you earn on that money, all the property you buy, and all of the goods and services you buy. It then taxes the person selling those goods and services for the privilege of selling them. Any time a dollar hits the economy it’s probably been taxed 6 or 7 times. And for all this what do we get? Subpar infrastructure and bloated government programs that enrich bureaucrats.

The estate tax is a "government double dipping," it's a tax that's been around since the founding of the country, put there by the people who very specifically wanted to avoid generational wealth forming dynastic rulers over their newly-hatched nation.

With an exemption on $11 mil, I wouldn't shed a tear if every cent beyond that were taxed at 100%.

Why is this ironic?

The red states are basically adult children complaining about their parents interfering in their lives while living rent-free in the basement.

Could you explain why you think it is an insurrection? I tend to think of insurrections as things that involve a lot more violence, the only violent death was from police killing a protester, the rest were heart attacks from walking too much.

Why would you think that Jan 6th was not violent?

>They [the injuries] ranged from bruises and lacerations to more serious damage such as concussions, rib fractures, burns and even a mild heart attack.

Because the average football match has more injuries than that. Oddly enough the only source that cites 138 cases also cites Brian D. Sicknick as dying from injuries sustained from protestors attacking him: https://archive.is/0kUab

In more detail:

https://archive.is/YVfFk#selection-367.0-371.193

>Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage

>A United States Capitol Police officer died Thursday night from injuries sustained when he engaged with a pro-Trump mob that descended on the U.S. Capitol the day before.

>Mr. Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday and “was injured while physically engaging with protesters,” the agency’s statement said, although officials didn’t immediately elaborate on the nature of his injuries or how he interacted with the crowd. After sustaining the injuries, Mr. Sicknick returned to his division office, collapsed, and was taken to the hospital.

Meanwhile in the real world:

>The Medical Examiner report said “Brian Sicknick, 42 years old: Cause of Death—Acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis Manner of Death—Natural.”

https://www.klkntv.com/officers-death-after-insurrection-was...

I rarely see such ham-fisted outrage bait outside of the Daily Mail talking about immigrants coming to take your job and rape your daughter. So how much do you want to bet that all of the other 138 cases are due to police just being clumsy and stubbing their toes?

If there was an escrow/judge that we could both trust I'd bet ~10k USD