Apparently, the Wall Street Journal has been using Sweden's elimination of the estate tax to make the "even-the-Marxists-are-doing-it" argument for repealing our own. Putting aside the fact that Sweden is not often used as exemplar of the sort of taxation system the WSJ would like, liberals should offer a trade: we'll do what they did if we can do what they do:
But let's say [the Wall Street Journal is] right, at least about Sweden, and U.S. tax policy should become more like Sweden’s. In that case, the United States would repeal the estate tax. But if death would "no longer be a taxable event," accumulating wealth would become a taxable event—annually. Unlike the United States, Sweden imposes a tax of 1.5% each year on the net worth of single-adult households in excess of 1.5 million kroner (or about $198,500), and above 3 million kroner for couples.
Okay, I'll buy that. Conservatives have been very effective at using the estate tax's counterintuitive nature to bury it in the thunderdome of public opinion. Democrats might want to think up similar strategies. Because it's hardly a tricky argument to say that the key to a healthy economy are the correct incentives for growth and innovation, not past fortunes and unearned inheritance. A small tax on wealth that could be channelled towards modernizing schools, subsidizing Pell grants, and freeing business from health care's onerous costs (by nationalizing it, naturally) is a perfectly intuitive way to approach taxation. Think The Wall Street Journal would agree?
