I didn’t say it was a punishment. I said it was a good argument. There’s no legal method of getting back ill-gotten gains from someone who’s dead. But if you ca

I didn’t say it was a punishment. I said it was a good argument. There’s no legal method of getting back ill-gotten gains from someone who’s dead. But if you can’t pass along your estate, it doesn’t matter. For the record, I don’t think the state taking away most (or all) of a person's estate after they’ve died is a punishment at all.