>>I also think Bill is drawing a distinction between what people do with their money in their lifetimes and what happens to what's left afterward.
>
>Probably so.
>
>If so, it is a distinction so easily evaded it has no impact.
>If somehow we remove the ability to bequest your estate to whoever you choose, expect more lifetime gifts and even more money spent on estate planning.
>
>Bill is looking as to whether the recipient "deserves" it.
>It may gall Bill that louts and screw-ups can inherit great wealth.
>So what?
>
>I get annoyed when I see poor people spending money on Big Gulp sodas and then not having rent money the next month.
>So what?
>
>If private property has any meaning, the owner is free to do anything he wants with said property.
>Including giving it to his kids, deserving or not, even if that offends Bill.
>It has nothing to do with the kids "deserving" it.
>

Bill isn't really suggesting that inherited money be confiscated. He is suggesting, and I agree with him, that above some threshold (which should be indexed to inflation, in my view), it should be heavily taxed. At a minimum, it should be taxed the same as any other income. After all, money is taxed every time it changes hands.

As to people playing games to avoid that, we already have the mechanism that addresses that. It's called "gift tax." In any year, any person can give any other person gifts up to a certain value ($14K the last time I looked, but maybe higher) without tax consequences. After that, it's taxable. So, even if Bill Yonaire :-) starts giving his kids his billions the day they're born, he's not going to succeed in passing it all along before he dies without some kind of tax consequences.

>If we start forcing equal privilege for all the children, then where does it end?
>You and I are privileged to be born and raised in the US, with education and food and proper sanitation.
>Do we average that across the world so our kids have the same food and education as kids in Mexico? or Sudan? or Somalia?

No, of course not. But it is incumbent on us as human beings to do what we can to raise all those sinking boats. We do it communally through foreign aid, and many of us do it personally through charitable contributions.

Tamar