You might notice Buffet gave his pile to Bill Gates, not to the government in estate taxes. So why didn't he just keep the money until he died, happily knowing that the idiots in Washington would be deciding where it all went? Where did he obviously think it would be better spent? How many of us have a large enough pile to be able to make that kind of choice and never miss a meal?

Given that Gates Sr. runs the foundation that Buffet donated $30-odd billion to, I guess it's not at all surprising that Gates Sr. thinks the threat of the death tax is a gift from God.

You have to decide what "fairness" actually is. The true state of things now is that the wealthy pay far, far more in taxes than any possible assessment of the benefits they get back from the government. This is raw wealth redistribution. Many people think this is just fine--they have it, somebody else doesn't, so it's right and proper to take it from them. But let's not fool ourselves with the idiotic proposition that a billionaire pays millions in taxes because somehow he gets tens of millions of dollars more benefit out of the roads, defenses, infrastructure, and other things than the guy who pays a thousand dollars a year does.

Whether the State is a tyrant or a collection of people, or the more abstract "society," or whatever we're calling the Great Collective nowadays, if they own your wealth and the product of your labor, you don't. That they give back some minimal level of medical care, housing, and food doesn't change that. There used to be a word for that arrangement in this country.