Who gets Bubbles the chimp?
Michael Jackson and estate tax morality
Michael Jackson lived and died abnormally. His funeral, in the same vein, will likely feature a public viewing at his famed Neverland Ranch. Chances are he will be buried in his trademark costume. After that escapade, our memory of the gloved and sometimes loved one will fade. We will be left to wonder and witness what staying power his music will have in the coming decades. For a few people, however, Jackson’s legacy means more than music. It is a matter of M-O-N-E-Y. What will happen to his assets?
It’s been discovered recently that there might have been a will.
People’s right to pass on their assets after they’ve died is fraught with moral complications, as Sam discussed in an earlier post.
The basic issue is property ownership. What does it mean for a dead person to own and then transfer property? For the living it requires one person to deliver property (say, a white glove) to another intentionally. Voila!, the property belongs to the other person. But, in a rather straightforward sense, Michael Jackson can’t now carry out this transfer; he can’t own, intend, or do anything. So should his will be enforced by law and/or morality?
One strong argument in favor is that most people want to be able to transfer their assets to others once they have died. It might be constitutive of self-respect to be able to pass something on to people of our choosing; we and our choices live on, in some manner, by doing so. And, arguably, it imbues our life with meaning to know that our work might impact future generations of our family or loved ones in that way. People can and do agree when they are alive to allow this process of post-mortem asset transfer to occur. This is an easy way to get around tricky moral issues: Almost all people want it in some capacity, their representatives voted in favor of it, and they are doing it. There is a lot of legitimacy tied to each of those three steps.
The common argument against this concerns some of egalitarian issues I discussed earlier. One might argue that it is unfair for Bob rather than Carl to receive money from David, who happens to be Bob’s uncle. The argument is that Bob and Carl are equally worthy beings and inequality between them is justifiable only insofar as it reflects their choices, and not their luck. It is purely a matter of luck that David is Bob’s and not Carl’s uncle, so it is unjust that David’s money goes to Bob as opposed to David or, rather, the society as a whole.
There is a middle-ground between these two arguments that we seem to have embraced: estate taxes. This enables the transfers to continue, but not without limitation. But, if the only problem is the egalitarian issues, why is it anything different when David has passed away? The luck of having David as an uncle is the same when he is alive and the estate tax rate should seemingly be the same as the rate that applies to gifts one receives from a living person.
One reply might be that David’s ownership of his property is clearer when he alive. He doesn’t own his property when he is dead, at least not in the same manner, and any post-mortem transfers are thereby something different. His clear ownership of the property when he is alive might limit the impact of the egalitarian concerns in a manner different from when he has passed on and his ownership is more tenuous and artificial.
A place where morality meets the pavement is that there is an estate tax level above which people will merely transfer their money to their loved ones before they die. And this would end up unequally affecting those who happen, by sheer luck, to die young, unexpectedly, and tragically, like Jackson.
-Jake
Related posts:
- Libertarianism
- Is the estate tax fair?
- Nordic self-respect
- Genius and self-respect
- Who owns the news?
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