Please stop fucking up the estate tax argument

So, I-920 was debated at the League of Women Voters' event on Mercer Island. The repeal supporter, Dennis Falk, ran the standard Wing formation play of decrying "punishment" of people who achieve the American dream.

"It is wrong to target a group of people because they've been successful," Falk said.

Fair enough; pretty standard boilerplate opposition to the estate tax- it assumes that most people believe they will join that successful group of people. It's the response that gets to me, though. Jeri Wood had this to say:

In rebuttal, Jeri Wood said the estate tax only applies to a couple of hundred individuals. The funds it generates go toward financing public education.

This tax affects millionaires, many of whom have made money from the efforts of state-educated employees, Wood said.

Jeri stutter-steps up to the right argument at the end, but the opening salvo is way off the mark, IMO.

A tax is fair or it is not fair - it doesn't matter how many people it affects. Saying a tax only affects a couple hundred people actually underscores the repealists' argument, that a few successful people are being "punished".

The real, and significantly more important, argument is that without public education, business loans, business tax cuts, public roads, student loans, etc. etc. etc., no one would achieve their success. It is a public duty to repay some of that debt that has accumulated. The millions one accrues during life represent a debt owed to both past and future generations through the public trust.

A person's heirs have actually less claim to an inheritance than does the public. This is not punishment for success, this is simply paying the cost of success owed to public assistance, from which every person in this country benefits, whether they like it or even know it or not. This is the moral, public-interest side of the argument.

The other, less-visited side of the argument, is this: Farms are exempt from it. Businesses would have to be very badly run to be affected by it. And the honest reality is, it just isn't that onerous. We pay income taxes on all money we earn - whether through working or simply waiting. This is nothing more than an income tax on heirs - not on millionaires or billionaires, but on people who are inheriting money they did not earn through their own work.

Them's my thoughts, anyway...