The debate over repealing the estate tax is generating more heat than light. Conservatives talk about helping family farmers and small-business people.
Liberals talk about curbing the rich.
Nobody talks about the millions of aging baby boomers that polls show to be increasingly in favor of repeal, since they are inheriting sizable estates from their parents and want to pass on their own wealth to their children. We believe that mending the estate tax, not ending it, is in the best interests of the country. As Gordon Wood points out in in his book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, America's first leaders rejected the European model of hereditary privilege and hierarchical social ranking. They hoped to replace it with a more open republic based on liberty and equality. Although still evolving, the U.S. has succeeded in becoming a middle class meritocracy with opportunity and mobility for most of its people.