cigar_no_baka, I am opposed to what happened to your grandparents. I don't know when that happened, but the laws regarding the estate tax have changed significantly in recent years, with assets as high as $8 million no longer being subjected to the estate tax. The parents who saved all their lives and want to pass on $50,000 to their children no longer have anything to worry about with the estate tax. Neither will most family farms or small businesses be subjected to the tax....and nor should they be.

However, less than 5% of the revenue generated through the estate tax comes from people with estates of $8 million or less. Most of the revenue comes from families like the Rockefellers and the Hiltons, who will now be able to pass on billions of dollars of old money from generation to generation and no longer have it subjected to a penny of taxation. This tax was established by Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to avoid a "French nobility" scenario that was prominent before the French Revolution....where the richest people in society pass on untold wealth to their heirs, wealth that buys them ever-more political influence without having to lift a finger to earn that wealth.

Billionaire investor and unlikely populist Warren Buffett said it best a few years back when denouncing the potential roll back of the estate tax by suggesting how dangerous it is for society to reward those simply for "winning the genetic lottery." For all the talk of work ethic coming from the political right, it strikes me as odd that they're defending the lack of initiative that inevitably comes when a person inherits their fortune rather than earns it. And think of it this way. The government stands to lose out on nearly $500 billion in revenue over the next decade or so by repealing the inheritance tax....and for every penny that Paris Hilton is NOT paying in taxes, the rest of us get to pick up the slack.