Interesting Interpretation of History #1

In Sunday's East Valley Tribune, we have another example of what I'm calling an "interesting interpretation of history." In this episode, Linda Turley-Hansen juxtaposes pilgrims growing corn on their own land with China deciding not to institute a "death tax."

Huh?

Yup, apparently it's proof positive that the "death tax" is so bad that even China decided not to implement one. According to former television news anchor Turely-Hansen, even the "new Communists" know to do away with the "death tax." Heck, even Russia has gone to a flat tax.

In an attempt to be fair to her odd interpretation of history, she does argue that then Pilgrim Governor William Bradford "gave every family some land," which they then worked and were able to grow enough to, I guess, prosper. This was done, we are told, because the "communalism" approach didn't work. So, give people their own land and they're work it and take care of it. The lesson here is that of "pride of ownership." That's why we should do away with the "death tax?!"

What does the "pride of ownership" and the inheritance tax have in common? She doesn't say.

But in buying her argument, we are to forget that the Chinese government owns everything in the first place so the peasants who work the fields don't "own" anything to tax.

We are to forget that the peasants would not make enough money to qualify for --any-- death tax, even under current U.S. law. You'd need an estate of $3.5M for that to even be on the radar screen of a tax liability. But there may be millions of Chinese peasants falling under that category, but I kind of doubt it.

We are to forget that capital formulation in China and Russia is nothing like here in the U.S.

We are to forget that family farm that fall anywhere near the threshold for payment under the "inheritance tax" amounts to merely 0.11 (yup, that's zero point one one percent) of all deaths in the U.S. (source).

So how Ms. Turley-Hansen can draw a logical conclusion that pilgrims grew their own corn to eliminate the inheritance tax is today's "Interesting Interpretation of History."