I have always found the concept of an estate tax interesting. In a general sense, if we are for personal accountability how can we allow someone to be rewarded for merely being born to a family? The whole concept of inheritance should be disgusting to these individuals. One should expect people to exert the same tenacity and intellect they did to obtain their wealth, be it their offspring or a stranger. Yet somehow this odd notion of family overrides our principle of personal accountability. Perhaps it is more about personal liberty. If that be the case, how than can we justify private property rights? For example, surely a child born five generations from now will have less liberty than a child born five generations ago, for a child born does not generate an acre of new land. So the liberty of tomorrow’s poor must bend a knee before tomorrow’s land owners who potentially did nothing but be born into a family line of wealth. If only we could view our community as our family, perhaps in that society the estate tax would be celebrated not only by the community but also the children of the rich.