>>>>So do you advocate inheritance taxes?
>>>
>>>Absolutely. After a reasonable deductible I'd tax at 90% or more. I have no problem with passing on a few millions. I'm after the billions.
>>
>>How difficult do you think it is for anybody expecting billions to find a country with less restrictive taxation of inheritance ?
>>The only reasonable target is again middle class not able to pick up anfd leave for sums above deductible and in the low million range.
>
>That's a frequent argument, but historically it's not valid.
>Before Reagan marginal tax rates on income and inheritance were almost triple what they are now and wealthy people stayed here and fought to have the taxes reduced.
>There were some notable exceptions - Clint Eastwood's famous spaghetti westerns were made outside the US as a tax maneuver - but most wealthy people stayed here and pumped billions into getting people like Reagan elected.
>That strategy worked and is still working- but it's not cast in stone.

Now we are coming into an area where each of us both can "argue" tautologically. They stayed because they had the avenue to change the rates ;-))

Long term (lets say half a dozen generations) view will show that the poisson-distributed leaders of the pack could not keep their exalted place, regression to the average will happen. This keeps the capital still in the states, whereas it would make economic sense ESPECIALLY in the 0.05 Billion group to leave the country and take the capital with them. Dunno how inheritance tax is entwined with the US twist of taxing worldwide earned income of abroad living ID card holders, but forcing them to let go of their citizenship to escape a tax (which would often be higher than the sum those descendants could expect to earn in the following decades) might further drain capital resources not invested in things like the stock market.

And nearly all twists forcing the capital to stay in the states would be a very heavy blow to capitalistic theory and system.