Courtesy of Westminster Wisdom - the whole posting on inheritance tax is worth reading - here are some more.
Churchill published his Liberalism and the Social Problem in 1909. In it he wrote:
The best way to make private property secure and respected is to bring the processes by which it is gained into harmony with the general interests of the public.
When and where property is associated with the idea of reward for services rendered, with the idea of recompense for high gifts and special aptitudes displayed or for faithful labour done, then property will be honoured.
When it is associated with processes which are beneficial, or which at the worst are not actually injurious to the commonwealth, then property will be unmolested; but when it is associated with ideas of wrong and of unfairness, with processes of restriction and monopoly, and other forms of injury to the community, then I think that you will find that property will be assailed and will be endangered.
2 comments:
The key "property" that Churchill was talking abotu here was land. See his Edinburgh speech on different types of property and how and why they ought to be taxed.
Of course that makes it doubly ironic that we reason for increasing thresholds for IHT is to try to take the family home out of it. That is precisely the one (and probably only) asset that counts as "associated with ideas of wrong and of unfairness, with processes of restriction and monopoly, and other forms of injury to the community".
PS - by the way - you can read the whole of Liberalism and the SOcial Problem at Project Gutenburg.
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