Heart of Cheapness: "Let’s do the math here. An estate tax with an exemption of $5 million would affect only a handful of very wealthy families: in 1999 only 3,300 estates had a taxable value of more than $5 million. The average value of those estates was $16 million. If the excess over $5 million were taxed at pre-2001 rates, the average taxed family would be left with $10 million – which doesn’t sound like hardship to me – and the government would collect $20 billion in revenue each year. But no; the whole tax must go"
An excellent op-ed.