To be clear, while the op-ed page of the Journal is decidedly conservative, the news operation is something altogether different. In this case, the news editors seem to have permitted blatant propaganda. The article's theme is one of out-and-out class warfare and mimics the playbook of the Democrat Party. Worse still, the target is one of the few remaining healthy industries left standing after the meltdown of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the 'too-big-to-fail' institutions nurtured for decades by the Party of Weakness.
The life-insurance industry has enjoyed beneficial tax treatment for its products for nearly a century. Whenever Congress tried to change that, insurers always had a mantra at the ready: We protect widows and orphans.
Life insurance needs to be free from income taxes, the industry said, because of its special social function. It keeps survivors from a life of penury when a chief breadwinner dies.
But in a development all but unnoticed outside the industry, life-insurance companies gradually have shifted away from their broad historical base of middle-class households...
...Instead, statistics show, an increasing portion of insurers' business consists of selling large policies to wealthier Americans, often as part of complex estate-tax plans.
Gee, I wonder why? Perhaps the government's incessant meddling with estate taxes -- one year nothing, the next oppressively high -- makes life insurance a valuable weapon for anyone to wield?
The shift means that a growing proportion of the tax benefits of life insurance goes to the well-off, not to the middle class that once was the industry's backbone.
The industry's safety-net role is eroding just as Congress is scouting for new revenue sources amid gaping budget deficits, raising concern among insurance executives that lawmakers could revisit the industry's tax advantages.
In fact, a comparison of the chart at left illustrates that the distribution of life insurance gains (above) is far more egalitarian than that of typical investments.For you consumers, the executive summary of this article should read: Democrats continue to find new ways to steal your hard-earned money.
And for those in the life insurance industry: consider this story a canary in the coal-mine.
Mark 'life insurance' down as industry #203 that has been demonized by the class warfare rhetoric of the modern left. Never mind that America has no static class structure -- the rich become poor and the poor rich every day of the week. Never mind that life insurance has protected those of modest means for centuries.
Never mind all that. The progressives have American society to tear down. And more taxes to collect in their plot to redistribute everyone's wealth.
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