What are your thoughts on estate tax and inheritance tax? Look at these posts..

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It is money that they were able to earn because of the benefits society created for them, an educated workforce, reasonable infrastructure for transportation and communications, etc. Those are debts the estate owes and should pay.

Little pisses me off more than people who think they can benefit from all of the advantages that American society gives them, such as the most dynamic, wealthy markets in the world, and not have to give back through taxes.

Selfish, unchecked privilege is what the wealthy seem to feel, they should be able to amass wealth, much of it off the backs of labor to whom they refuse to give raises, and then feel like it is not morally repugnant to bitch about paying the lowest tax rate in the industrialized world and the lowest rates we have seen in this country since the nineteen-teens.

Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, it is not a virtue.

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And how does one get to a billion dollars in the first place? Ironically, greed?

The state provides the framework for that money to be accumulated. Without the state, the game in which the rich play wouldn't exist.

Your life's work is just that, YOUR LIFE. Not someone elses. It's generous enough that you can pass a few million on to your kids tax free. Warren Buffets or any other rich person doesn't have to worry about the life of their children.

And if Buffet is so concerned, he can give his life's work tax free - all the billions of it, by giving it to charities

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We cannot check this type of power that he and people like him are passing to his progeny. We can, however, tax wealth and hope to allow more people to eventually have better get access to the same benefits. Buffet seems to see his at least some of his failings and hypocrisy as a person and advocates for higher taxes on people like himself. He knows as a father that he can't help but help his children and he knows others people in his same situations also can't help but want to do what is best for their children, but at the same time he recognizes that people acting in such a selfish manner is a net harm to society. He knows that government is the only institution which has the power to spread that privilege around. You seem to agree with him that such unchecked privilege is a bad thing.

For the better part of 60 years, intergenerational mobility in the U.S. has been on a downward trend. A more robust estate and inheritance tax is one of the many ways in which the state can provide for the necessary services to fight against the decline and maybe even reverse the trend.

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