Inheritance isn’t the root problem. The problem is that the only people with any money are people who were able to save it decades ago. And that problem is because labor has been devalued, wages stagnated, and cost of living soared.

And all of that is because for the past 40 years or so, there has been more benefit to taking profits out of business than spending money within the business.

When you reach the top-tier income tax bracket, and the IRS starts taking 91% of your income beyond that level, $10,000 of business income is only worth $900 to you.

When your best employee wants a $10,000 raise, that money comes straight out of your “excess” earnings. It is $10,000 of your earnings that are not subject to taxation. Paying that $10,000 raise only costs you $900 once you reach that tax bracket.

But we don’t have a 91% top-tier income tax bracket anymore. We had a punitively high top tier rate for most of the 20th century, but it got cut down in the 70’s and slashed in the early 80’s. Now, the top tier income tax bracket is just 37%. When you reach that bracket, giving your best employee a $10,000 raise takes $6700 out of your pocket, instead of just $900.

Reagan’s views on the Laffer curve were correct: raising the tax rate beyond a certain point will actually reduce tax revenue. But tax revenue is not why we need the high rates. The benefit of high marginal tax rates comes from what business does to avoid them. We need to restore the business incentives that come with a punitively high top-tier income tax rate. We need businesses to increase their labor expenses to avoid that tier. Businesses should benefit the whole economy, not just the ownership class.

For similar reasons, we need taxes on registered securities, payable in shares of those securities. The shares collected as taxes will be liquidated in small lots over time, comprising no more than 1% of total traded volume, to limit their effect on the market. Exempt the first $10 million held by a natural person; tax everything above.

Dark Brandon’s Final Showdown.

Don’t launch it into the sun. There’s a perfectly good Mar a Lago down in Florida.

You failed, repeatedly, to acknowledge developmental psychology 101

I have acknowledged developmental psychology, repeatedly. I have rejected your characterization of not-fully-mature frontal cortex as exculpatory.

You would have a point if we were talking about an average 4-year-old, or a developmentally delayed 12-year old. Not an uninstitutionalized 15-year-old. Even a rather slow 15-year-old has sufficient mental capacity to comprehend extreme violence, and all the evidence says this kid wasn’t extraordinarily stunted.

Immaturity is reasonable when discussing crimes involving substantially higher degrees of mental abstraction. Not intentional murder.

The approach you should be taking isn’t that he is immature. The approach you should be taking is one that would apply to even a mature adult.

And I suppose you’re a neuroscientist, behavioural psychologist, and generally smarter than literally every single person working in juvenile justice.

This is another ad hominem, disguised as an appeal to authority.

No. I was describing your character

Correct. You were describing me, rather than discussing the issue. That is, by definition. An “argumentum ad hominem”. It is an “argument against the man” rather than an argument regarding the issue under discussion.

I readily concede the fact that a 15-year-old’s frontal cortex is not completely developed.

I reject the idea that only a fully mature frontal cortex is capable of restraining someone from murdering a teenager. Even a radically undeveloped frontal cortex is more than capable.

This kid went out that day with a deadly weapon, seeking out the person or people who had previously attacked his friend, intending to commit violence against that individual. He found this teenager. Based on this teen’s race, he believed this teen was complicit in his friend’s attack. He spent 4 minutes arguing with this teenager, then stabbed him.

This wasn’t a crime of passion. This was premeditated. He left his home that day intending to use his knife on someone. He knew his actions and intent were criminal and immoral, and he chose to act anyway.

Everything else in your last comment is an ad hominem, and doesn’t need a response.

The canaries are dying.

I have near-zero empathy for any competent person who chooses murder. The idea that a 15-year-old murderer should be excused for his actions strips every responsible teenager of their own agency. Your arguments are degrading and insulting to this kid’s victim and to every responsible teenager.

Because it would put blame on the adults?

I have no problem throwing the adults in prison with him, if you can reasonably show they are responsible. Go ahead and blame them all you want. But understand that the blame they carry does not in any way excuse him from responsibility for his actions, nor the consequences of those actions. They can be blamed also, not instead.

Murder is too simple an idea to suggest that a 15-year-old can’t be held responsible for committing it.

Consider the alternative, or, rather, that really seems to be what you’re implying: That children are responsible for their own upbringing.

His upbringing isn’t relevant to the issue. His deliberate actions are. He is generally responsible for his deliberate actions, regardless of how shitty a hand he was dealt.

We can give him some leniency on issues like contract law: He might not have the cognitive ability to understand an important legal document. He might not understand the value of money. He might not have the capacity for complex abstract thought, and should be protected from those who would exploit that and defraud him.

But Murder isn’t an abstract concept. It’s pretty simple. He isn’t owed any societal protections for deciding to kill someone.

And what if noone was warm to him, who is at fault when the village burns?

Him.

It’s a pretty simple concept. He is the one who performed the act. He is responsible.

I’d say the adults are.

Unless you can show the adults deliberately taught him to murder, I’d say no. If you can show they did that, they can join him in prison forever. But he doesn’t get a pass.

I’m perfectly happy to blame the adults for a kid becoming a little shithead asshole. Not so much when the kid deliberately decides to murder someone.

You argued that 4-year-olds don’t need supervision. Now you’re arguing that 15-year-olds are incapable of being responsible for their own, deliberate actions; that their parents, guardians, or other individuals charged with supervising their behavior are responsible.

Because that’s where your path leads: Towards a failure to regard other people as people.

No. Life, liberty, rights, and privileges can - and should - be deprived upon conviction of a crime. The appropriate deprivation of rights and privileges as a sentence for murder is life imprisonment. Nothing of my opinion disregards any person as a person.

Your position, however, disregards the victim’s rights as a person. Further, you have advocated for stripping me of my rights to participate in governance based solely on your dislike for my opinion.

You have justified fascism.

It’s about executive control.

I summarily reject your suggestion that a 15-year-old is so lacking in their capacity for executive control that they can be excused of murder.

If an adult has an intrusive thought

This wasn’t an intrusive thought. This was a deliberate act.

If a kid does not feel the warmth of the village they will find the warmth they deserve by setting it ablaze.

By all means, be warm to the kid. Until he starts setting people on fire.

You should be kept as far away from the justice system as possible.

You just “othered” me. You just called for me to be undemocratically removed from the political process, entirely because you don’t agree with my opinions. I have not been tried or convicted in any crime, or otherwise been the subject of any sort of due process that would strip me of any rights or privileges.

Your position is therefore undemocratic.

I do, indeed, understand that children slowly bear more and more responsibility for their own actions as their cognition and experience increases. What you don’t seem to understand is that the cognitive abilities and experiences necessary to comprehend the rightness and wrongness of murder are typically developed well before age 10. You further fail to understand that this kid possessed them. He knew what he was doing. This wasn’t some youthful indiscretion, or a simple failure to control his impulses. This was a deliberate act. He specifically went looking to kill someone, and succeeded.

You asked me several comments up to consider my own behavior at age 15. I never murdered anyone, and I knew that murdering people was wrong before 15. Long before 15. The overwhelming majority of kids are sufficiently responsible to use deadly weapons for hunting and sport before reaching their teens.

Murder stops being tolerable as soon as the individual is capable of deliberately causing it. This kid was capable of such deliberation. He is irredeemable.

I’m sorry you’re living under fascism.

Ad hominem.

Which does not mean that he is responsible for being the way that he is.

“The way he is” is “responsible for his own actions”. He has been found to have the mental capacity necessary to comprehend the difference between the “rightness” and “wrongness” of jamming a knife into another human.

Some people should just never see the light of day again. This kid is one of them.

Now I don’t know where you’re from but around here four year olds are unsupervised in public.

I suspect you misspoke. 4-year-olds require 24/7 supervision from a parent, guardian, or other caregiver in public or private. Failure to continuously supervise a 4-year-old you are responsible for is a chargeable offense.

It’s also not about the concept, but about what is considered right and what’s wrong,

It is about the capacity to understand right and wrong about a given act. Children much younger than 15 are expected to understand the general legal and moral implications of murder.

You have no idea what his psychology looks like

Untrue. I know he was subjected to numerous hearings and evaluations to determine his competency. He was found to not have sufficiently diminished capacity to excuse or mitigate his actions.

Ban the sale of it. That’s it. You want to cultivate it yourself, no problem. Share it with friends and family, OK. Just no more industrialized tobacco.

There will be a black market. So what? The problem isn’t that people are using it. The problem is ubiquity. It’s readily available everywhere. A black market isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as selling it in every shop across the country.

Ooh, edgy.

Oh no! Anyway…

What basis do you have for presuming his incompetence?

The fact that he was unsupervised in public tells me he should be assumed to understand the concepts of right and wrong.

He doomed himself. I don’t owe him a thing. If I owe anyone anything, it is his victim, not him. If I do owe his victim, locking up his killer for the rest of his life would be my pathway toward redemption.