What the nation is experiencing is great transfer? Should a family's resources go to the government or to the creative spirit/vision that generates more opportunity, more jobs, more investment, more charity. The idea of more working capital in the system sounds like increase for building and ventures for new innovations, new designs. Freedom from this tax will release a greater blessing on America.

Will, give me a break. Please! Your regurgitation of Republican ideology has little basis in fact. Tax roll-backs, such as this, clearly benefit those in the upper percentile (the tenth, and especially the first, percentile and above) with little overall benefit for the nation's economy. The so-called "trickle-down" effect simply doesn't come about. And any money that is spent by the wealthy, because of the tax windfall, usually goes toward high-end luxury goods (second-homes, luxury cars, etc.) that have little influence on overall employment. Arthur Laffer, though well-intentioned, has never been proved right.

Please.. It's Un-american to tax people for their lifetime between 35-50% and then tax them again when they die on the money they already paid tax on.. Can't a person work hard to transfer his/her assets to his family if they are honest hardworking americans?
If 1 family has to sell their farm or business just so they could pay the tax to the government just because their parents died.. that is not right,unamerican and un-democratic.
please don't tell me this never happens or happens just a little.. as one time is absurd..
example father owns family farm worked it for 25 years.. dies.. farm land worth 2,000,000.. tax rate is 45%.. family owes 800,000... annual income much less.. have to sell part or entire farm to pay the bill.. this has happened and it's wrong..

like all good arguments, there's merit on both sides of the debate so why not a compromise? 0% on the first $3m and 50% on the rest...

Oh, please,knock it off!! "These jobs are leavin' boys, and they ain't comin' back.." sound familiar? Bruce Springsteen. And they aren't coming back, outsourced by smart business people who figured out a way to please the bloodthirty barbarians in the board room.
Board Members all, usually hand picked, stockholders, all with a vested interested to see their $$$ gets a high kick back off the sweat of third world Indian low-paid workers outsourced by those Yale, Harvard and Wharton Business school grads.
Read the papers - Employment up, salaries down.
Gee, I wonder why? We're being outsourced out of jobs. Check the plants ten miles south of the Mexican border, there are the manufacturing jobs that were in the rust belt forty years ago. A well paid worker down there is GRATEFUL for $10
A DAY.
"...these jobs are a leavin' boys, and they ain't comin' back....."
Wake up, you idiots.

seems one can't forget the discovery process, immigrant song, How to be a good steward, choose right boat,vehicle to take the children to the
Promised Land?, what type DeSoto cooperatives are forming formally informally, Leaving an inheritance for the children? Our first responsibility is to pass on to our children a spiritual inheritance. We want to pass on values - not just valuables.

http://www.bgcworld.org/newstand/legacy/Fall%2099/children.htm

Great blog.

Gosh Will---
With all the creativity/spirit and vision....why are our schools falling apart, our health care in crisis, our military in a quagmire in Iraq et al? (and please be more creative than blaming it on the liberals)

Face it. We must elevate themselves from our greedy natures. It takes courage, love and discipline to share. This is NOT about the family farm.

The top 10% of society continues to make money on money and they are fearful of letting any of it go. It's damaging the country.

Give the U.S. a little more time and the uneducated masses will be begging for sub standard pay like the people in the other "third world" countries. This is what happens from excessive greed over time.

Roger and Meryl: Do you guys get it? Want European style job stagnation, with permanent 10% unemployment, taxed to the hilt, all creativity gone (or emigrated.)

Job "destruction" actually fuels new jobs, creative new industries. Yes, there is short term dislocation and pain and we can all feel sorry for individual cases but it keeps our nation the most productive, creative on the planet. Also by bringing work and new industries to China, India, etc. it fuels their need for other American products (airplanes, computer software, food, etc.)

What do the rich do with their saved money anyway? Burn it? Bury it under a mattress? NO they INVEST it which allows capital to be used by less well off people. It's not a zero sum game.

Who would you rather have the saved money, the government, which has proven it is rather ineffective at finding the right home for it, or private businesses?

Just a few corrections. In the example given with a farm worth $2 million, the tax would not be $800,000. Because of the exemption (currently at $1.5 million and set to rise to $3.5 million), the tax would actually be $225,000 and therefore the tax rate would be 11.25 percent - far lower than if the assets had passed to the children as income or even capital gains should they sell the farm. Plus, if farms and businesses are going to be continued by the next generation, there are rules to spread out the tax over a period of up to 14 years. You don't have to hand a check over right away.

Also - if farms and businesses are being sold rampantly because of the ET - why has there never been one verified occurance of that? Don't you think pro-repeal forces would want to showcase those folks? Yet they have never found one...

In addition, if the ET is repealed and assets are transfered and then sold, you are going to have to pay capital gains on them. So a lot of people who ordinarily would never have to pay estate taxes (and only 1.25 percent of Americans do pay the tax) will be faced with a tax increase.

Finally, taxing people is unamerican huh? I think what originally started it off back in the late 1700s was taxing people without representation, not the act of taxing itself. taxes are a necessary part of any society, plain and simple. The question becomes who are you going to tax and how much. For me, I'd like to tax those who have so much money they could never need, use, or spend it all in a hundred lifetimes instead of you and me. Because if the estate tax is repealed, count on your taxes going up.