The Estate Tax

As one might expect, since I'm a liberal I'm pretty much against the elimination of the estate tax, and basically for one simple reason: it's income, and if we're going to tax some income, we should damned well tax all income. I see no earthly reason why I should have to pay taxes on every dime I earn from The Store, and yet someone else should have to pay zero taxes on money they earn because someone else died. Ditto for capital gains and everything else: as far as I am concerned, if you come into money, it should be taxed. Period.

Now, obviously you can't feasibly tax every monetary exchange that exists, or else we'd have an IRS agent present at every garage sale. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not swayed, either, by the idea of "double taxation", because it's not the money that is taxed, but the people earning it. I have no problem with person A deciding that they want person B to have all their money after they die. Fine. But the idea that person B has some reasonable right to get all of that money tax-free seems totally bizarre to me.

End of rant.