It seems simple enough to identify what can be claimed as mine and what can be considered ours. But deciding for an entire society can require more time and thought and debate.
Here's an example drawn from my experience.
One day in 1999 I stepped into an elevator in a Seattle office building and ran into an old friend. When I asked him what he had been up to, he explained that he had been working for a long time as a paid consultant on a particular issue. He went on to say that it appeared his work was finally coming to fruition in an act of Congress that now seemed almost sure to be enacted: the repeal of the federal estate tax.
His comment gave me a sick feeling.
I wasn't aware that there had been such a powerful and well-established effort under way to repeal what I thought was a fair and important tax and had long considered a matter of simple justice
I believe that a system of taxation where the wealthy pay in proportion to the disproportionate societal benefits they receive is the fairest way to finance our government. The citizens of most Western democracies seem to agree.
In the years I've advocated for the estate tax I've been reminded over and over again how important it is to study all sides of an issue and to get as many facts as possible. I admired and decried the cleverness of the repealers in referring to the estate tax as a “death tax.”
I thought the more accurate phrase was the “grateful heirs” tax. This is a tax on heirs that is imposed—like so many other taxes—when wealth is transferred.
Once you get beyond the slogans, it becomes clear that the estate tax has been doing a fine job for the republic for about a hundred years. I have found no compelling reason to abandon it.
An array of sound arguments favor keeping the tax. Chuck Collins and I outlined most of them in our book Wealth and Our Commonwealth. It quotes the nation's founding fathers and many other notable thinkers who have argued for, written about, and advocated in favor of such taxes over the years. President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, spoke passionately about the estate tax's relationship to the ideals of equity and justice before its adoption in 1916.
Some argue for the estate tax out of concern that without it the citizens least able to do so might have to pay more so that the government can do the things we assign to it: build armies, roads, and schools, and more.
At the turn of the present century, we were uncomfortably close to having an economic aristocracy in this country with a widening gap between the very rich and ordinary citizens. As Warren Buffett, one of the richest Americans and strongest advocates of the estate tax noted recently, the groups at the bottom and middle are losing ground today and they shouldn't be.
That's precisely what I see happening if we repeal the estate tax. The rich would get richer; middle-and low-income families would find it harder and harder to move ahead. And that would strike close to the heart of the American dream of applying one's talent and energy to build a better life.