if an estate is worth less than ~$10 million, it is exempt from the estate tax, so you can pass on a few million to your children no problem. IIUC, basically n

if an estate is worth less than ~$10 million, it is exempt from the estate tax, so you can pass on a few million to your children no problem. IIUC, basically no one with significant estates actually pays the estate tax, so I don't think this actually matters, but estate taxes are good because dynastic wealth is the absolute worst. > The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion.... > Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life. > by all means such taxes should be graduated, beginning at nothing upon moderate sums to dependents, and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell, until of the millionaire's hoard, as of Shylock's, at least "_____ The other half \ comes to the privy coffer of the state." - Andrew Carnegie, Wealth, 1889 If you have a personal wealth more than $10 million (or whatever the estate tax exemption limit is/will be), then yeah, you should spend some of it on stuff that you think is worthwhile. It doesn't need to be a fast car - Carnegie was into libraries.