I'm sure that there's probably zillions of working people in Iowa who could have socked enough money away so they might have to worry about the estate tax if only they weren't blowing it on booze and women and movies. Or, more likely, food, clothing and shelter.An estate tax effectively and unfairly taxes a person’s earnings twice, he argued: first when they earn it and again when they die. And, he added, it penalizes savers without touching spenders.
"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies."
And the estate tax doesn't penalize "savers." The people who saved the money are by definition dead and no longer capable of being penalized. It only means that people who do nothing to earn the money other than winning the who's your parents lottery, like say, Donald Trump, won't inherit quite as much as they otherwise would have. And while the Trumps and Waltons and others who inherit wealth will get to keep some more of their daddy's money as a result of Grassley and company's largesse, he completely ignores that those people "spending every darn penny" are paying sales taxes on most of the pennies that they do spend, so they're not getting a free ride by any means.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story ... 906946001/