Murderous Thoughts

The “kids” at the dinner table, the same one they'd sat at for years, what’s left of a meal still scattered about. Lucy, the oldest, at the head of the table, where she always sits. Danny, two years younger and then Richard, named after the father, now long since dead. They called him Little Dick because one day an Aunt says, "The boy looks like the old man", so he was Little Dickie, and the name stuck. No one outside of the room had ever called him that.

Lucy’s high on red wine, Danny’s smoking weed and Dick wondering which way to go. They’re not kids anymore, now in their 60’s and thinking of snuffing the old lady. Lucy saying, “Tell it to me one more time”.

Her talking to Danny, who was always the numbers guy. The one who never had a problem at school. He’s looking at the plate in front of him, pushing around what's left of a slice of peach pie with a spoon.

Not looking up, “I told you. It’s a cliff that the government created. On January 1 the taxes go up, and that’s that. The only way around it is if the fools in Washington step back and make a deal. If they don’t, then we get hit."

Lucy still confused, saying, “Why now?” Adding, “How much money is it?”

The brother, looking disgusted, "She’s worth about six mil all in. The capital gains rate going from 15% to 35% will hit us on her stocks and the house. Then there's the 55% estate tax that kicks in over $1m versus the $5.1m it is now; it's close to $3.5mil more tax owing than if she died today. It comes to about $1.2mil apiece."

Dickie, not liking where this is headed, and looking for some other way, “Why don’t you use the Power of Attorney you've got and just transfer out the money now. Fuck the cliff and the three mil it will cost us.”

Danny, still playing with the pie, “You can’t do that. The IRS would see it as transfers in anticipation of death. We get caught, cost us big in fines.”

Dropping the spoon, turning to the sister, eyes meeting, “If she goes before the end of the year, it saves us a bundle. Even if there's a compromise, they'll still gouge us plenty.

Lucy, looking back, “It’s the meds that are keeping her going. Ninety-three, and her pressure 70 over 40, barely alive. If she stopped with the pressure pills, the numbers would fall a bit more; she'd fall asleep and just not wake up.”

Danny saying, “How long”? Lucy making sure what he’s asking, “You mean before she dies?” Him saying, “Yeah, how long’?"

“Maybe five days, it could be just one”. It got quiet with that.

After awhile, Lucy, being the oldest and the one who made all the decisions early on, tells it like it is, “We wait til Christmas, see what Washington is going to do to us. But then we have to choose”. Adding with a hard look on her face, “We'd have only six days left”.

The boys saying nothing, shaking their heads, "Yeah".

Okay, I’m just goofing around. Experimenting with fiction/dialogue. And yes, I do tend to dwell on the dark side. But this story is more real than you might think. Some 7000 older folks are dying every day, 200k by the end of the year. A fair number of those have bucks in the bank. If it’s over $1m, then big taxes are due if falling off the cliff is in our future.

My story is pure fiction, but in real life, thousands of people and millions of dollars are up in the air. After all, it's about the money. Right?

Comments

[rsnoble]

I'm a psychopath so the decesion in the story to stop giving the old hag pills would be a no brainer. In fact id probably be relieved that someone finally figured out how to get rid of the old bitch.

[covert]

your imagination is closer to reality than you think.

http://covert.ias3.com/forums/

[Albertarocks]

Every family needs a rebel.  Can you tell which one it is in this lovely clan?

http://files.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/290603_S/among-this-family-is-a-rebel.jpg

[Ar-Pharazôn]

that little metal-hippie kid is so badass!!!!

[Albertarocks]

Haha.  Yup.  Maybe it's the Van Halen family?

[blindman]

oh yea, i have seen it myself.
raise them, take them to their first
carnival or picture show. feed them and teach
them the language. warm them in the winter,
hell, warm their parents in the winter to have
them turn out the lights on your intravenous
recovery fluids after a broken leg surgery.
they are beautiful grandchildren with real
life economic concerns no doubt; it is a fiat
world we subscribe to. the ny times said so.
yes, it is all about the monies.
go and die grandma, it works for my cash flow

[Bear]

I had this very discussion with my kids around the kitchen table last year. We concluded that I should just by physical gold and die whenever I wanted to

[dunce]

Ghetto thugs and crack whores that you have never met are in your parents will. Thats where the inheritence tax goes.

[malek]

Some kids are eying their parents' money?

I'm sure that never occurred before in history.

[Essential Nexus]

If the kids were in their 20's this would be a very interesting and controversial moral situation.  If Grandma used SS or Medicare to buy the drugs, the fact that those programs steal from the young to give to the old may entitle the young to reclaim their property. Just a thought.

Thanks Bruce for the fictional-nonfiction humor.  Excellent post.

[Bansters-in-my-...]

So....

How were the mushrooms Bruce,a good year?

[CheapBastard]

Cops are searching for a woman who - along with three other goons - savagely kidnapped, tortured and robbed a Bronx couple, police said Sunday night. The foursome even took turns urinating on the woman they abducted, police said.

Lisa Hylton and three men ambushed the 49-year-old woman outside her Eastchester apartment on Sept. 2 and dragged the victim into her home, police said.

They demanded money, only to discover she was broke, police said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/woman-men-kidnap-torture-rob-b...

[Amagnonx]

I like the way your mind works :D

I enjoyed the writing style - I noticed some didn't, never mind - language isn't a straight jacket.

[Optimusprime]

Nor is it a strait jacket.

[PeteJE]

They deserve what they get.  This thinking and class of people is exactly the same as "let them eat cake"; I say press it and lets see how it turns out. 

[viahj]

Fuck You Bob Costas, and yes, I can be a part of ZH and watch football...my mind isn't so limited and my ego so tall.

[I think I need ...]

is this about the NO GUN rant? I'm with you that pissed me off

[lamont cranston]

BK- Thought it was your childhood pic at 1st.

Being 59 and have done nothing else but run two smallish biz in my life in the hinterlands of NC, I've scant understanding of large scale. But enough to get one thing (kinda like the hedgehog, if you read a few chlllens stories) - survival. 

We get by out here but takes lotsa beer after 5 PM. Everyone gets what is what these days even out here in the middle of freakin nowhere. We understand that we never had any say but the distress is that nobody gives a rat's ass about us small biz guys anymore. Bitch about Jesse Helms and his ilk but he got it, like Ron Paul. 

I've been trying to liquidate two non-essential commercial properties for 16 monts now and looks like I'll just take the crappy offers to get it done by 12/31. 

Shit. 

[Clesthenes]

lamont,

Borrow to the hilt on said property; use proceeds as you planned to do with sale proceeds.

This takes care of one problem.

Now, you have to deal with tax consequences of a sale.  You could delay sale... tell tax thieves to take a hike... or anything in between.

[Optimusprime]

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

[RECISION]

I've been trying to liquidate two non-essential commercial properties for 16 monts now and looks like I'll just take the crappy offers to get it done by 12/31.   Shit. 

Hmmm... so, you're starting to figure out how the squeeze play works are you?

Head they win, tails you lose.

Same as it has ever been.

[ebworthen]

This is just one aspect of phase four (or is it phase five, six, seven, or...?) of the "bleed any asset of the middle class or the rich other than the ultra rich to complete the fleecing of America".

Of course they are going the tax EVERYONE but those rich enough to hide and offshore their wealth.

This is nothing new.  What do you think the bailouts were for?  Privatized gains and socialized losses of course.

The "fiscal cliff" and all the urgency for "austerity" and "responsibility" of course come after the bailouts and during FED QEinfininty which of course will not end.

Taxes and tax rates affect behavior, as do immoral governments and financial institutions, just don't tell that to Ben or Timmy or the Sophists in Washington.

To HELL with the whole system, a corrupt crock of shit, a scam, a Ponzi, a lie.

[Disenchanted]

re: corrupt systems

A very long and interesting article at The American Conservative by Ron Unz on admissions and enrollments at the elite American Universities(Ivy League, MIT, CalTech etc.)

The Myth of American Meritocracy

How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?

brief excerpt:

Once we begin separating out the Jewish portion of Ivy League enrollment, our picture of the overall demographics of the student bodies is completely transformed. Indeed, Karabel opens the final chapter of his book by performing exactly this calculation and noting the extreme irony that the WASP demographic group which had once so completely dominated America’s elite universities and “virtually all the major institutions of American life” had by 2000 become “a small and beleaguered minority at Harvard,” being actually fewer in number than the Jews whose presence they had once sought to restrict.⁵⁰ Very similar results seem to apply all across the Ivy League, with the disproportion often being even greater than the particular example emphasized by Karabel.

In fact, Harvard reported that 45.0 percent of its undergraduates in 2011 were white Americans, but since Jews were 25 percent of the student body, the enrollment of non-Jewish whites might have been as low as 20 percent, though the true figure was probably somewhat higher.⁵¹ The Jewish levels for Yale and Columbia were also around 25 percent, while white Gentiles were 22 percent at the former and just 15 percent at the latter. The remainder of the Ivy League followed this same general pattern.

This overrepresentation of Jews is really quite extraordinary, since the group currently constitutes just 2.1 percent of the general population and about 1.8 percent of college-age Americans.⁵² Thus, although Asian-American high school graduates each year outnumber their Jewish classmates nearly three-to-one, American Jews are far more numerous at Harvard and throughout the Ivy League. Both groups are highly urbanized, generally affluent, and geographically concentrated within a few states, so the “diversity” factors considered above would hardly seem to apply; yet Jews seem to fare much better at the admissions office.

Even more remarkable are the historical trajectories. As noted earlier, America’s Asian population has been growing rapidly over the last couple of decades, so the substantial decline in reported Ivy League Asian enrollment has actually constituted a huge drop relative to their fraction of the population. Meanwhile, the population of American Jews has been approximately constant in numbers, and aging along with the rest of the white population, leading to a sharp decline in the national proportion of college-age Jews, falling from 2.6 percent in 1972 and 2.2 percent in 1992 to just 1.8 percent in 2012. Nevertheless, total Jewish enrollment at elite universities has held constant or actually increased, indicating a large rise in relative Jewish admissions. In fact, if we aggregate the reported enrollment figures, we discover that 4 percent of all college-age American Jews are currently enrolled in the Ivy League, compared to just 1 percent of Asians and about 0.1 percent of whites of Christian background.⁵³

[groundedkiwi]

I thought Jews are semites, not european?

[Disenchanted]

This American claims to be Jewish, does he look even vaguely semitic?

see pic here: http://www.clotheslineblog.com/files/imagecache/imageblog/files/scooter%...

Many American Jews of eastern European stock(Ashkenazis) are whiter than I am. But they like to hide behind the skirts of Judaism and shout "antisemite!" at their critics.

[Disenchanted]

Some will inevitably counter(or at least think it) with the argument that the Jews earn this overrepresentation because they're smarter and work harder than all the others. Maybe that was true in the past...but scroll on down in the article and read the content under this subheading:

The Strange Collapse of Jewish Academic Achievement

[ebworthen]

Wouldn't it be easier to hang a bunch of bankers and corrupt congress-persons?

[Escapeclaws]

Republican Thoughts...you see what happens if we don't extend the Bush Tax Cuts? Extending them is the only moral thing to do...that and ending Social Security and Medicare, which once again pit the young against the old. Gotta exploit those divides if there's any chance of starving the beast.

[ebworthen]

The beast is the mammon lusters on Wall Street, those in Washington are their second-rate lackeys.

Hang the lot of them.

[AgShaman]

Old people have been programmed to keep their "wealth" in CD's and money market accounts.

It doesn't matter if the kidlets are having dark thoughts

Granny is gonna get murdered anyway when her nest egg gets "Corzined" by the perverted "Uncle"

[CheapBastard]

They better act quick. Estate taxes rise in 2013.

[H E D G E H O G]

Just kill the fucking tax collectors, problem solved, end of vignette....................

[q99x2]

And they are going to take that money and give some of it to me. Which is condition that should be more cause than enough to start a revolution.

[Whatta]

There's no (immediate) capital gains on an inherited house (or stocks). Your basis is the value at death. Right?

[steveo77]

Incorrect, and the rules are changing for the worse.

[NuYawkFrankie]

"Hit Granny wid da axe - so youse dont pay no tax.

Deese are da fax - so say Goldman Sax"

- 50-Shekel Lloyd, the Wall St Rapper ("Yo Bro, You Gotta Go Wid Da Money Flo!)

[azzhatter]

wouldnt even be a discussion at the blankfein household. where is the cyanide asked lloyd

[ptoemmes]

Find a reindeer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfSb6J4jhcU

[Jackfish]

If this conversation is happening today, imagine what must have been discussed in December 2010 when the estate tax was ZERO

Here's a list of notable deaths in December 2012.  Unfortunately, not solely US taxable people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_December_2010

[groundedkiwi]

Mmm this has got me thinking. Was'nt the elder Bush hospitalized recently?

[Uncle Remus]

Bruce, you got all these wankers Jonesing for Dr. Seuss...

[Miss Expectations]

So, here's the last picture of dad alive.  What Bruce failed to mention (and what the children will never discuss), are the dark suspicions about what killed dad that morning.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/2687?size=_original#caption

[sansnobel]

Bruce, there you go again thinking that you are entitled to anything in this life.  You see the way the Communist overlords see it, they just need you to believe for just long enough that your individalism matters in the grand scheme of things because that is how they get human productivity.  But when the health of the State's finances is threatend well suddenly you don't own anything anymore.  You see,  we are all pawns in the game of life unless you happen to born into the right family with political ties to ensure your family always has a seat at the head table and is able to shield its personal wealth from those evil Communists....To them you and I or anybody else who actually has created some value in this world are less than scum because we are not Polit bureau political class.  Because we are so inferior we need wise and powerful overlords like them to watch over us and keep us safe from ourselves.  How dare you think you are entitled to the fruits of your own labor Bruce?????? How dare you eat steak and Lobster when there are children eating dirt for breakfast lunch and dinner in Somalia!!!!!  You get catfood from now on to eat!!!! And I will take  99% of the sweat of your brow and I shall have my much deserved steak and lobster dinner that you worked so hard for but did not deserve it because you are less than ameoba shit.....Laugh all you want folks but that is the history of the fucking world right there.  Wealth is a figment of you imagination.  Wealth means nothing without health and the rule of law!!!  Until you motherfuckers wake up and start beheading these fucking idiots that are responsible for 99% of the worlds problems because they think they are entitled to the sweat of someone elses brow we are generationally screwed for eternity. 

[steveo77]

nicely ranted

[Bruce Krasting]

Well, I hope you feel better after that. It was fiction, just fiction.

[steveo77]

Are you missing the point?     reality is stranger than fiction.

[willwork4food]

Don't let the rift raft get ya dude.Quite a lot of people on drugs around here tonight.

[steveo77]

The red pill is not a drug, wake up to reality

[LetThemEatRand]

This story does a wonderful job of depicting the truth behind much of what passes for political "philosophy" among the Rand set.  When you cut through the BS, a lot of people in the Rand camp would rather kill someone than pay taxes.  And it matters not that the money belongs to some else to begin with (Grandma obviously didn't decide to give the kids a couple mill while she was alive, did she).  I wonder how many people who read this will see it as a morality tale about taxes rather than murderous greed. 

[caustixoid]

LTER, isn't there some Rand blog where you can exclusively rant about "Rand" instead of here.  You vomit out your straw-woman every single posting.   It probably comes out your other end too -- The "D" and the "A" probably come out ok, but you must scream when trying to push out the "R" and the "N"...