Buffett Defends the Death Tax: ‘That’s a Good Source of Revenue’ for the Gov’t

‘If a kid comes out of the right womb in this country, they’ve got food stamps for their rest of their life’

EXCERPT:

WOODRUFF: “Estate taxes, a thought about that?”
BUFFETT: “Oh, estate taxes, I mean, I — you hear people call it the death tax. There are going to be two-and-a-half million people die in the United States this year. How many estate tax returns are there going to be? Probably about 5,000. And the interesting thing is, if I talked to somebody about welfare mothers or something like that, they say how debilitating it is to have these food stamps, and it takes away their incentive to do anything. If a kid comes out of the right womb in this country, they have got food stamps for their rest of their life. They just call them stocks and bonds. And their welfare officer is their trust officer. I mean, I think I — I think having a significant estate tax that starts at a fair-sized level is — if you’re going to have to raise $3.5 trillion, I think that’s a good source of revenue, and that I — it shouldn’t apply to, you know, 99 percent of the people.”

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