The Estate Tax

The Estate Tax

An interesting perspective on the estate tax . The argument is that it's bad for society, and ultimately for the rich, to have no estate tax because the extremely wealthy end up with no incentive to work.

This poisoned chalice afflicts societies as well as individuals. It was bad for Spain to have American extractive wealth in the 16th and 17th centuries without having to work for it, and bad for Argentina to have built its 20c culture on cattle-raising for export, an activity much like mineral extraction. It was bad for the antebellum US South to construct its culture on a plantation economy. ... It's been bad for Kuwaiti and Saudi society to have all that oil it didn't make or find, bad for lottery winners…and usually bad for the children of the very rich.