Inheritance taxes are for destroying families

An inheritance tax is a special kind of evil. 

You're not just robbing the dead. 

You're robbing children.

Worse yet, you are robbing those who are about to die of the entire sense of their life's purpose. 

It is the most basic of human instincts, to want to pass on what we have created, to want to make more lives, to love them even more than we love ourselves, and to want to leave them a better future than the life we had.  In a voluntary world, it would be the most normal of affairs to beget those creations to one's family, friends, and most beloved endeavors.

Yes, there are those who do not feel this urge, whether that's because of psychological scars from a troubled past, or simply having another direction in life. I have nothing to say against those people. They find other ways to contribute to a better future, and we will find others way to care for them when they are old. 

But someone has to make more humans, and someone has to love them enough to want to make the world better for them than it was for us. Otherwise, what is the point of the human race, of the Universe, of literally anything? 

A legacy is not just money. It's not even just the family business, or the family farm, or family heirlooms. It's even more than a sense of connection to our past. It is the visible, tangible evidence, whether it is a little or a lot, that we existed, that we were loved by those who gave us life, that we were not a misfortune or an accident, that we belong with the world and there is a place for us in it. 

It would be unthinkably cruel to rob even the wealthiest and most privileged of the younger generation of this. But what's crueler still is to selectively rob the middle class, the kids who are only inheriting a little, and have neither sophisticated knowledge of the tax code, nor lawyers and accountants on speed dial. 

Every scheme for government-sponsored robbery is sold with claims of being a new version of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. 

But Robin of Locksley didn't steal from the rich to give to the poor. He stole from tax collectors and gave back to their victims. And he didn't work for the government. Furthermore, every one of these schemes, even the most sophisticated, requires some level of destruction of wealth every time someone parts ways with their loved ones.

Yes, it's true, there are some among us who will receive no legacy other than their parents' love. Some people don't even get that.  It's an everyday tragedy, and one of the struggles of civilization is to find ways to give opportunities to those who were born with the talent to use them and nothing else. 

But plundering and destroying our civilization's accumulated storehouse of wealth, of knowledge, and of love for future generations — no.

It is a great evil.

This evil is brought about by equalists who are obsessed with (quite explicitly, they don't hide it) sculpting the blank slates that they fervently believe in, but reality never brought about.

It is an atrocity.  

And it has to stop.