Duplicating layer w/ settings?

You can do part of what you’re describing but not exactly in the way that you list.
If you have 2 layers you can copy all the settings of the layer from one to the other using the right and left arrows in the Cut window:
However, that only copies the layer settings over, not any objects in that layer. The other implication is that the layer needs to exist for you to do that. That implies that there are some objects present on the target layer.