THANK GOD efforts to repeal the inheritance tax failed. There is no group in American society as left wing as the inheritors of great wealth. If we had repealed the death tax, in a few years, faster than you could say MacArthur Foundation, the country would have been rife with neurotic trustefarians setting up left-wing foundations to support the work of grant-greedy academic revolutionaries.

The money will be far less harmfully spent by the federal government than by the foundations these patricidal scions would have established. With a high inheritance tax in place, you get a few extra bucks to pump into the entitlement programs before they go kablooey, and you get a massive improvement in American society. Instead of having a huge inheritor class, the product of the recent boom, you will have a generation of people who are affluent but still have to work for a living.