Other People's Money

"Seventeen lawyers on retainer, and you've managed to work it out so that, in a free market, in a so-called free country, I can't buy some some shit-ass stock every other asshole can buy. Congratulations, you're destroying the capitalist system! While everybody else in the world is embracing it, my boys and girls are fucking it up. You know what happens when capitalism gets fucked up? The communists come back! They come out of the bushes, don't kid yourselves, they're waiting in there. But maybe that's not so bad, 'cause you know what happens when the commies take over? The first thing they do is shoot all the lawyers!" Lawrence Garfield (Danny DeVito), Other People's Money, (1991).

Facebook. God love it.

Most mornings, I do a very Anne Greer (my late mom) thing. While my wife gets an extra forty-five or so minutes of sleep I make coffee, grab breakfast and hang over the sink. My mom would watch Fox News. I check Facebook. Mostly, it has become a clearinghouse for news...sort of Twitter, only full sentences. If something went on overnight, chances are the geeky ding-dong dillionaire's creation will have it.

But...

This morning I saw a post by a news network that got me thinking. It featured someone labeled a "Patriotic Millionaire." Okay. I'll bite.

He was going on, prepared statement in hand (I wonder how that happened), saying that giving his children tax free money after he passes was not in the little darling's best interest. They should learn to stand on their own two feet, be self-sufficient and make their own fortune. Etc. Apparently, he is unamused by tax proposals that would limit, or eliminate, the so-called death tax.

More coffee. I need... More. Coffee.

Isn't it his money?

I took an estates class in law school at Syracuse. The professor went on at great length, spanning several weeks' time, talking about how to encumber money in trusts, bequeath stuff to foundations and non-profits and otherwise decide who gets what when the Great Beyond beckons. Case law was replete with heirs (it was normally an ex, but never mind) suing the estate, having been disinherited for reasons both clear and obscure. The result was always the same. Tough.

Because it was the decedent's money! 

If the patriotic millionaire wants the government to have his loot instead of his kids - give it to the government. Give it to charity, to a non-profit. To me!

He wasn't talking about his own money. He's not stupid. He's talking about other people's money.

He's talking about my money.

Dude, stuff a sock.