re: #356 sagehen

The inheritance tax wasn’t really about gov’t revenue, that was just a bonus. The main point was to prevent the rise of a hereditary aristocracy.

Andrew Carnegie was also strongly in favor of an inheritance tax, but he believed it would be revenue-neutral to the gov’t. He wanted it so that people who’d earned great fortunes would be forced to spend it all on something useful before they died. (Libraries and university literature departments were Carnegie’s personal favorite thing, but I bet he’d be pretty impressed with Bill Gates using his money to eradicate malaria).

Carnegie is a wonderful source of conflict for us Pittsburgh lefties. We usually see him as evil incarnate, but I grew up in Carnegie libraries and the great museum in Oakland. We resolve it by “blaming Frick”. Families I know of will not picnic in Frick Park.