...and your family has lived the for generations, you think it is "wonderful"?
Turning game reserves into subsistence farms not really "wonderful" at all for the endangered species or their habitat.
And one only has to look at Zimbabwe to see just how well this will work out.

Questions like this stop being a problem.

Certainly not the State.

I won't care; I'll be dead.

My children will be able to stand on their own two feet or I've failed as a parent. I never got an inheritance. Most people don't. We should tax that insanely high, and give everybody a nest egg at 18.

I could make the allowance for one modest property to be handed down, but that's it.

....that is appropriation.

Inherited wealth is a scourge on society.

I won't be able to leave my business with my kids?

Why should they get a business while people who were less lucky than them get nothing?

Last edited Wed Aug 22, 2018, 01:12 AM - Edit history (1)

so why shouldn't they be able to keep on running a successful business that employs 45 people?
Isn't that a benefit to society? My business makes it possible for my employees to make a comfortable living and to provide for their families.

so, again, how is that not beneficial to society?

But calling what I worked for lucky is bullshit.

I got a college degree from my parents. And I am I white male.

But after college I was poor.

who worked just as hard as me to make my business successful, shouldn't enjoy the fruits of their hard work upon my passing or retiring?

As far as them being lucky, that's utter bullshit, they earned and deserve it.

That's an easy way around it.

Still surprised to see such a pushback against a high inheritance tax on DU.

this about you saying that my kids don't deserve the fruits of their hard labor upon my passing or retiring.

Inherited wealth is a scourge on society.

and I disagree vehemently.

When you were born nobody promised you a perfect world. You get your cards and you play them the best way you can. You don’t get someone else’s money because you are Society.

Sorry but that’s life pal.

It's called taxation and eminent domain, and the idea that they're illegitimate is RW propaganda.

The farmers were offered a buyout for their property. They decided it wasn't enough. Their call.

you are Society.

People work hard so their kids have a better life than they did. At least in theory.

They don’t work hard so you can sponge off of them. It’s your job to make your life what it is.

Last edited Wed Aug 22, 2018, 09:12 PM - Edit history (1)

Try as I might, I can't find anywhere I said that.

What is a problem are families like the Waltons. Sam's great, great, grandchildren won't have to work. That's how aristocracies are born, and it's a problem.

Getting a lot of money YOU never personally worked to earn is rife with issues. That is what is going on now in this country. The rich are insatiable and the country is poorer while their wealth increases.

Robust inheritance taxes are GOOD for a country.

but what Recursion is saying is that my kids don't deserve to inherit the business that we worked so hard to make successful, that, IMO, is just crazy.

He is leaving his kids just enough of his money to get by, but if they want to live comfortably they will have to work.

The rest of his money he is giving away during his lifetime.

We're not rich, far from it, but we do live comfortable and our kids work at the business and will continue to work there after we retire.

The destructive type of inherited wealth is counted in multiple millions of dollars (and, increasingly, billions).

Not small, family-owned businesses.

to dispose of the income he as worked for and built up over the course of his life. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't go that way. I didn't work for society. I worked for myself and my family. If society ever went crazy like that, and the laws were changed to disallow inheritance, I would quietly hide my wealth little-by-little and let my children have it after my death.
When I was working 2 jobs, I worked my second one under the table so I could have as much as I could for my own survival. I hated myself, I hated the world. I was one piece of bad news away from killing myself. I figure, I was working between 65 and 80 hours a week, I deserved to get every dime I could get. Some months, that extra money meant we weren't living on the streets.
My point being people are going to do what they feel they have to do to benefit their families. They aren't going to say, "Sure. Here ya go." You know how people say "The world doesn't owe you a thing?" Well, it's mutual.

contract was helping our fellow citizens.

Now it's all about me getting mine and to hell with everyone else?

That's just really sad.

Do you decide when I've given enough? Or can I? If I pay taxes on 100 hours of work on a 2 week check, can I work another 30 hours just for me? Or is that, somehow, wrong? Where has society failed me that forces me to work like that just to survive?

If wealth were distributed, then everybody would be getting by just fine.

If you wish to distribute it to five kids.....or maybe a dozen grandchildren......$25,000......$100,000? Half a million? There's evidence out there it won't be long before none of that will put your multiple grand kids thru any good college. You have to define for me what "rich" is, and if it will be "enough to get by" five, ten, twenty years from now.

My father would be considered "a trust fund baby" thirty years ago. He and my mother are barely able to pay their property taxes now.

According to every software program I've run I can retire whenever I want to.

But I haven't retired yet.

Why?

What if the stock market crashes the first two years of retirement?

What if we have 1981 style inflation?

It's real hard to know when you have enough.

So I keep working one more year.

If wealth were distributed, we wouldn't even need to have this conversation.

Where do you draw the line of whose “too rich” for your liking?

After that, you designate charities, or let the state deal with it.

heirs. Inheritance needs to be taxed.

and my kids won't inherent the business, they already own part of it.

Automatic inheritance creates a hereditary aristocracy and inevitably concentrates wealth into a permanent ruling class

Some of the land was originally stolen, some was empty, some was bought. So it is entirely possible to live on a farm/ranch etc in South Africa that was legally obtained. Plus modern farms/ranches could have been purchased entirely legally recently from previous owners.

Only about 10,000 to 15,000 nomadic San (hunter-gathers) and Khoikhoi (pastoral herders) lived in SW Africa before the smallpox epidemics killed many of them after 1500AD. They certainly weren't occupying all almost 500,000 sq miles of South Africa with that few people when the Dutch founded Cape Town in 1652.

They weren't going to be able to hold on to that much territory no matter what, the Bantu (who had already pushed them south in the 1st place) and later the Zulu would have taken over if the Dutch hadn't arrived.

You have acknowledged that land was stolen but some of it was purchased. You sound like a cartoon comic.

....with less then 10,000 tribesman living in over 400,000 square miles most of it would be empty most the time.
And if someones grandparents bought a farm in the 1950's from native africans how would that be "stolen"?

It's not like the land didn't change hands MANY times in history. The Bantu/Xhosa tribes were conquering and displacing the Khoisan people when the Dutch showed up.

What does anything you stated mean? I'll answer it for you "nothing". The colonizers/imperialist were simply making productive use of the land.

So let me guess, Taking their land, was the most practical and rightful thing to do, they weren't using it.

...or you couldn't. Right or wrong had little to do with it unfortunately.
That's the way it was and the way the African tribes themselves operated or the Khoisan tribes never would have left the more fertile grasslands bordering the Kalahari, they were pushed south by the Bantu and conquered or assimilated or fled.

Screw them. They are lucky they weren’t imprisoned for their racist crimes and backing apartheid.

....and have the government want to come take it away because of your skin color.
Not every white person in S Africa is descended from original colonists. Some are more recent immigrants and blameless for thing that happened 300 years ago.

for land they or their parents likely stole and/or kept by apartheid?

"they or their parents likely stole and/or kept by apartheid"

Or possibly legally bought.

"Why is it gunners are so upset about racists getting a $1.5 million"
What do guns have to do with it?
How do you know they are "racists"? Magic 8 Ball tell you so or what?

on this thread.

If I had more time, it would be amusing to pull on that thread and see what unravels.

Why, do you think I am secretly pro-arbitrary land confiscation?

It's that I wonder to what extent you've thought it through, and whether or not there's a coherent set of principles behind your statement.

First of all, it's safe to say that most every party who has ever seized land has some kind of justification, including the example in the OP. "Arbitrary" is a matter of perspective and opinion.

More importantly, all land was initially un-owned. The first assertions of ownership were acts of confiscation. The disposition of land ownership today involves a history of repeated seizure. Without confiscation, no one would have legal title to any land, and there would be no nation states - certainly no USA.

passing, despite our differences.

and just to be clear, I am no gun guy, haven't touched a firearm since my discharge from the Army.

I remember seeing your accusation to the poster, and thinking that was a deeply exaggerated response, and wondering how you got to that reply, and why you did it. The post in question was completely forgettable, compared to anything which would have been considered an attack. I can only remember your answer, and not a word from his or her post jumped out at me enough to even be remembered. Odd.

Unfortunately calling someone a "white supremacist self hating coward" as I was in that post is frowned on by the TOS, juries and me. You have a nice day now.

to what's been happening north of the Limpopo. Perhaps they would have seen what an epic disaster this type of shit begets.

It's telling that one of the first acts of the military government that bounced Bob Mugabe was to plead with whites to return to Zim.

One, they're leasing land they once owned, which is a slap in the face to any farmer. And two, the Zimbabwean government has already shown how much legally binding contracts and land titles meant to them a decade ago.

The farmers that return will be the ones interested in growing cash crops for export to China who will only care about making as much money in as short a time as possible, in case they get their leases revoked in the future. The farmers who would work to create sustainable farms to support the local population will stay far away.

And SA is heading straight down that path.

Once something is stolen by a government, why would anyone trust them to not do it again. A contract doesn't mean anything when the other side holds AK-47's.
If I were a white farmer in SA, I'd take whatever money I had and move to Australia.

I'm guessing you know exactly nothing about South Africa.

will turn out to be relatives of the President, his wife, and other government ministers.

Hate to hear that. First, it'll destroy the land. Second, it's a dying industry.

But yeah...the govt is not going to just "give" land away, and certainly not to the poor blacks.

What's disturbing is it seems as if companies and tribes are going around claiming land, and the white landowners have little or no say in disputing the claim.

Oh, well...I don't know enough about it, really. Not my country. But once apartheid was repealed, I probably would have moved elsewhere, if I were a white farmer there, knowing that the origin of much of the land was stolen, and the lives it devastated.

Although, there, like here with immigrants, generations of whites had lived there and those people had nothing to do with what had happened, and were citizens of the African country and knew no other country as home.

This is what happens when you go around invading places and stealing land.

of the land here in the US—Native Americans or you know who?

The Zimbabweans seem to have found a workable solution (see post #2.

If it is only a case of giving the land away, without the education and resources to successfully run a farm, then the land will not be productive, the equipment will break down and corrode, and people will lose everything they own in bankruptcy. Farming is A LOT more than plant some seeds, harvest the crops, and sell them somewhere.

....much of the land was empty when the Dutch moved in, the Portuguese brought small pox to the tribes around 1500, by the time the Dutch founded Cape Town in 1652 the native nomadic pastoral Khoikhoi tribes were decimated in number. The Dutch did buy some land from them. The native population was so small the Dutch imported slaves from Indonesia and Madagascar.

"much of the land was empty when the Dutch moved in..."

A inaccurate premise forwarded by Holden in 1866 (The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races). Much of the idea of the 'vacant land' myth in African colonial history rests on white/colonial misunderstanding of African sovereignty and land use.

Most of the Bantu and KhoiKhoi used land in rotation, often leaving large sections of land fallow while they cultivated another region or moved their herds to greener pastures. As pastoralists they would migrate through various grazing-grounds, thereby appearing to leave a grazing ground not in current use 'empty'.

In the 1980s revisionist and liberal historians and archaeologists began to argue against the theory of an empty land. Using new archaeological evidence they were able to show the presence of Bantu like people in the eastern half of South Africa since around 300 AD.


(Source: Africa: A Modern History by Guy Arnold & South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination, and Development by Ellen McArthur)

....does not equal ownership in the modern world, especially in the 1600's.
Yes the Bantu etc had been there for centuries...but after the smallpox epidemics there was indeed some empty land. Some tribes were completely wiped out by the disease.
And if the Dutch hadn't pushed the Khoikhoi aside the Xhosa and later the Zulu would have.
Either way stealing someones land they might have owned for over 350 years (and some of the land was bought from the Khoi)
is as wrong as when the Dutch did it.
And looking at the example of Zimbabwe (or Venezuela) isn't going to improve things in S Africa but make them worse.
Turning game reserves into small subsistence farms is not a improvement for the animals or habitat either.

On DU the truth will not always set you free.

Otherwise we are Republicans.

Hunting preserves that serve to keep alive populations of wildlife that are disappearing elsewhere due to habitat loss.

And you want to divide these up for more farming. Nice.

Which used to be the bread basket of Africa. The government in SA has reached the point most thought they had avoided in the 90s. They have found the new enemy to keep them in power.

Land will now be given as political favors and production will go to shit.

If they go the full Zimbabwe route look for food shortages in 5-10 years.

.....oh yea are taxes will be going to give these idiots to eat in about 2 years. Lovely.

Did you read the comments at the bottom of this Newsweek article? People have zero compunction now about spewing their white supremacist hate. Scary.

I understand the sentiment. But we've seen this movie before. It didn't end well.


Unless South Africa has a plan to ensure these farms are farmed WELL, and that the former owners are treated justly, this is just going to stoke racial resentment and result in failed farms. I think Nelson Mandela would not support such an effort.

And btw, our country has not handled the situation of the original inhabitants of this land well—most Native Americans live on reservations.

If the Native Americans had been successful in the Indian Wars, wonder how they would've dealt with the whites?

But one of the main points of Mandela's approach was was to avoid vengance taking and to seek an equitable future for all South Africans.

I was was glad to see Zimbabwe finally renounce the politics of racial resentment.

I guess I don't see the point here of destroying productive farms. If redistribution of wealth is the goal, then tax the farms sufficiently to do so.

These kinds of land seizures will almost always result in crop failures and mismanagement.

Good luck South Africa!

While a couple of white farmers have returned, most have said "we'll pass".

"Why?" You may ask.

First many of these farmers moved to places like Zambia, Nigeria and Mozambique which largely let them do their thing in peace, as long as they follow the rules - which typically means staying out of local politics.

Second, Zim's government doesn't exactly have a stellar record of enforcing the rule of law, property rights and contracts. These farmers have no assurance, other than the president's word, that a future government won't again whip up anti-white sentiment and move to revoke those leases in order to score political points.

Mugabe worked very hard to chase out whites and foreign investors and in the process shattered the country's reputation.

Why would I take a chance on a business venture in Zim, where it could be seized at any moment by politicians out to win votes, when I can set up shop nextdoor in Zambia where the government has shown it honors property rights and contracts?

Unfortunately it's probably going to take a while to repair their reputation BEFORE they can even begin attracting solid investment.

who was forced from his family farm. His farm was given to the president's wife and then he watched it go to hell. The equipment was destroyed or sold off and the crops turned to dust. You cried.

Now you're in Canada or Australia and you get an invite from the government saying they changed their mind and are now willing to rent your land back to you with certain stipulations. Lucky you, the program that has been available to people with black skin is now going to be opened to you even though you have white skin. And if some militia guys take a few shots at your family, just call 911 and the police will come. Hopefully they weren't the militia guys.

Could you answer that invitation with anything other than a guffaw?

It'll be a hard, decades-long slog. Frankly it won't be as complicated without the specter of white supremacy dragging down the self-esteem of Zimbabweans.

There will be the ever-present dash and corruption. I hope that gets minimized over time and the country is able to grow.

What is MLK's famous quote?: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."

They chased away their most productive farmers and gave the land to corrupt politicians who don't know anything about farming.

The average age of their citizens is 19 and the average woman has four babies during her lifetime causing serious population growth.

Helping to mitigate that problem a little is the annual net emigration from the country as its educated people leave the country.

Add that to the corruption, bad health care, bad education and you have a situation that is not ideal.

no more white supremacy dragging down the self-esteem of Zimbabweans.

It won't be easy but whites aren't the only ones who can figure things out. Hell, this country wouldn't have survived without the Native Americans help. And we know what happened to them.

and just treated everyone as Zimbabweans or is that not an option? If you do not chase the whites out of your country you must have white supremacy?

But let's hear it for self esteem? We can chase away people based on the color of their skin but we can have good self esteem about it.

And okay I'll bite. How would our country not have survived without Native American help? As a former history teacher this one has me stumped? You could argue the first colonies would not have survived the first three years without NA expertise, but after 1776? You think our country wouldn't have survived without NA help. Tell me what your thinking is?

Last edited Wed Aug 22, 2018, 10:04 AM - Edit history (1)

The white farmers aren't coming back so the country has to start from where they are now.

It's sad but ultimately it was inevitable. The centuries of colonialism were bound to end in Africa. This historic upheaval which has played out before our eyes since the late 50s has put many in harms way, but frankly, nowhere near the number of those harmed by the centuries of white supremacy.

Different countries on the continent handled it differently. All of them, unfortunately, didn't have a Nelson Mandela.

"Only white men can successfully farm, the Africans will ruin it all and starve!"