Three observations, also gleaned from Perfectly Legal:
While the overall annual pay increase for everyone in America averaged a nickel an hour between 1970 and 2000, chief executives won pay raises that averaged $660 per hour per year.
*****Microsoft began with a gift from his parents, Bill. Sr. and the late Mary Gates. And in significant ways it was the taxpayers who made that gift possible. The father went to college on the GI Bill. The couple bought their first house with a VA loan. Those investments by the taxpayers paid off for the Gates family, as they did for millions of other Americans. … [T]he taxpayers also paid a salary to Mrs. Gates when she taught public school. So not only did the country’s largest fortune begin with a gift that was tax-free, but also the gift money was there because of the taxpayers.
*****Repealing the estate tax, [Warren] Buffet said, is “the equivalent in economic terms of choosing our Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics. … Without the estate tax, you in effect will have an aristocracy of wealth, which means you pass down the ability to command the resources of the nation based on heredity rather than merit.”