All good points, so I'm not really sure. Honestly.. my first instinct would be to reform our tax system so that all income is treated equally by way of tax bra

All good points, so I'm not really sure. Honestly.. my first instinct would be to reform our tax system so that all income is treated equally by way of tax brackets. So small gifts under about $10,000 wouldn't be taxed much, but the rate would scale pretty quickly so that $100,000 might be taxed at 30% or something. I'd also vote to restore the pre-Reagan top marginal tax rates so that $1 million would be taxed at 50-90%. And actually now that I write this out, that might all be sort of how it works now. Except that tax brackets have only been adjusted for inflation, not things like the wage stagnation since 2000 or the exponential rise in housing costs: https://www.thebalance.com/irs-announces-tax-brackets-and-inflation-adjustments-for-2019-4579822 https://www.thebalance.com/irs-announces-tax-brackets-and-in... Also, capital gains is a flat (regressive) tax, and social security taxes (also flat) top out at an income of $132,900. If those were placed under progressive income tax brackets with no cap, I think many of these problems would go away. At that point I'd be concerned about increased government spending. So we'd probably also need a hiatus on new expenditures for some number of years, or until certain metrics are met, like the national debt being paid down by some amount. Realistically though, the world is too complex for that kind of absolutism to actually work unfortunately. I realize that this would be an inconvenience for middle class families trying to send their kids to college, etc. But if you look at the big picture, an increase in upper class taxes (especially inheritance tax) could pretty drastically lower everyone's tax bill. People would have way more money for gifts, and that money would recirculate more in the economy (the opposite of trickle-down economics).