Tax shelters are magnets for investment. As more dollars were invested in agriculture, meat and milk production increased and prices fell. Production costs were increased, as tax motivated investment drove the price of farmland well beyond its income earning potential. But not everyone was affected equally. History also cautions us to be wary of the growing clamor for repeal of the estate tax.
Wealth tends to concentrate, absent countervailing measures.
If wealth becomes too concentrated, free enterprise with opportunity for all is destroyed. Our European ancestors understood that. They left feudal societies where land was tightly held by a few families and came in search of land and opportunity to America, a land where ordinary people who worked the land well could own it. The estate tax was created in part to prevent concentration of wealth from denying the opportunity they sought to future generations. Estate tax opponents have turned that logic on its head by arguing that estate taxes are undermining family farms by forcing their sale to pay off estate taxes.