My thoughts on the estate tax have altered radically over the years. I used to be convinced by the plight of family farmers that estate taxes were evil. I’ve swung all the way around these days and now I’m convinced that the estate tax is essential. We could discuss a loophole for family farmers, for families that can demonstrate their dedication to farming as an exclusive way of life, but I am more convinced than ever that the children of wealthy people should be required to work as surely as the rest of us are. They should have their estate’s taxed.
No one in this country should feel entitled to not work for a living in the same way that no one should be expected to work in order to survive. If survival is good enough for today’s wealthy that the estate tax would make poorer, then they can sit in their little homes and golf in their back yards for the rest of their natural lives and refuse to work and pay taxes like normal people do. That’s fine by me. We’ll see how long survival will be good enough for them.
Living among farmers as I have for most of my life, I have seen farmers destroyed by the application of estate taxes to their farms and ranches, so their objections to the estate tax being applied to their legitimate farm holdings is not a sob story, as in a fake story like Reagan’s welfare queens were. This is especially true if the parent dies before the child is old enough to be listed as a property owner, or if the parent doesn’t know that listing children on their accounts and property can keep estate taxes from kicking in.
Everyone else with too much money? Take their money away. It’s our dollar, we can do that with it and the people who hold it as wealth.
