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Comment by perkee | Hacker News Reader

The Cabot family [1], one of the big Boston Brahmin families made their bones shipping slaves and opium. If the name is familiar, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was one of their most prominent sons.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cabot-family [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Cabot_Lodge_Jr.

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Yet another reason we need a strong estate tax to prevent intergenerational overaccumulation of wealth.

Stealing someone's wealth away from their children just because they happen to die is one of the most repugnant things I can think of.

How about Pablo Escobar's wealth?

Seize his assets for being a mass-murdering, drug dealing shitlord, yes. Seize a portion from Jane Q Publique because she worked hard and invested wisely? No.

Why, philosophically, do you think that children of wealthy parents deserve to inherit that wealth more than anyone else? Is it luck that they are born rich? Are they the reincarnation of their deseased parent? Has God decided so?

Would you also support changing the US to a monarchy? Is it different to be born into wealth than born into power?

Because I don't believe in stealing other peoples' things just because they have them. And because I want to make sure that I am free to dispose of my property as I see fit and allow my children to reap the benefits of my labor, and the labor of the generations that have come before them, clawing our way up off of rock farms in northern New England to something better.

> Because I don't believe in stealing other peoples' things just because they have them.

So that makes you a libertarian who thinks any tax is theft, and estate tax is just as bad as any other tax?

I always wonder how libertarians really think society would work, when nobody cares about anything other than themselves and their own wishes. Countries with weak governments are really not that nice to live in.

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