COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

In view of the current tax season, Countercolumn's editorial staff (i.e., me) is pleased to present the following modest proposal.

Consider: The estate tax gets repealed in 2010, but only for that year. In 2011, the estate tax returns in full force. So it's like playing blackjack: You've got to keep granpa alive until 2010, but not beyond 2010, or you go bust, and wind up having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes.

So here's what you have to do: You've got to entubate grandpa and declare him a vegetable. Nevermind the obscenity of the term. The term "subhuman" has served us well in other contexts, too.

Then arrange to take custody of the meatpuppet, at least until new years day, 2010. At 2010, simply withold nutrition. After all, if you've got the power of attorney you need to withhold nutrition and water, you certainly have the power of attorney you need to execute a new will on their behalf designating yourself as the sole heir.

Even better, we could securitize the mentally deficient, turning them, essentially, into conduits for the tax-advantaged transfer of wealth - each vegetable lending his or her name as beneficiary for the estates of perhaps hundreds of aging high net worth individuals, storing the wealth until 2010, or such time as the vegetable can be liquidated, and assets transferred at their death to the intended recipient, free of estate tax.

The broker can be paid a percentage of the difference between what would currently be due under the estate tax and that which would be due in tax year 2010, which would be zero.

Look, don't get all fucking maudlin and sentimental on me, now. This is just business.

Theoretically, those on death row could even make up all or part of what it costs to keep them, and run them through all the due process it takes to execute a criminal in this country.

In the aggregate, the economy would become markedly more efficient, if not more just. But in the long run, isn't it really the same thing?

I hadn't thought about it before, to be honest. I've never been comfortable with argument predicated on the subhumanity of anybody else. But, you know, from a strictly economic/utilitarian point of view, I hadn't considered how exciting and liberating such a world view could be.

Further, if custodians/guardians of subhuman species are not willing to make efficient use of the wealth management vehicles entrusted to their care, then their title could be stripped of them - and the asset "condemned," shall we say, in the same process that we use to determine the value of a property had the owner elected to employ it in its "highest and best use."

Best of all, a secondary market in human vegetables could be established, in which market participants can bid on an exchange somewhere, based on the tax value of the vehicle to themselves and to their families.

In this way, a part of the burden of keeping a vegetable breathing for years in a hospice can be removed from lower and middle-class families - who have little to gain from any estate tax benefits - and transferred to a population in a better position to afford it.

Yes, I predict that by year-end 2010, hundreds of feeding tubes vacate the abdomens of hundreds of the mentally deficient, the senile, and other undesireables with a giant slurping sound.

Splash, out

Jason

(Countercolumn does not give ethical advice. Consult your spiritual advisor for the ethics which apply to your specific situation.)