Because the idea of leaving something to your kids (and a legacy beyond oneself) is a fundamental motivator for most people?

Boo. That's not what's at stake here; people don't wanna pay taxes that are fairly owed to the government.

> fairly owed

You're doing it again. You're assuming that it must be a just tax. You're assuming that a tax is somehow intrinsically "owed", that any tax requires no justification.

Literally the comment I am replying to is about making it so no one can pass on property to their kids.

The asset has not moved outside the family, has not been sold, no profit on sale has been realized.

You think a profit transfer has been made, because you think in terms of atomized individuals with no family.

Citizens are taxed as individuals, not families. A person did not have assets, and now they do. I don't care that the land was "in their family." If they are even decent at managing their assets, then they will have more assets when they die than when their parents did. And if they don't, then it's not my concern. I don't believe in government policies to perpetuate generational capital wealth, and I will vote against them as long as we have a system where money can be used to influence the government.

Wrong, we literally double everything in our tax code so that spouses can file jointly.

This is the ‘fuck anyone trying to pass anything to their children’ element which most parents will (rightly) got WTF at.

The exemption is several million dollars.

I don't mind if people get mad when anything more than that is taxed.

That is not what the prior comment I was addressing said. Maybe implied, but that’s different.

Yeah, I'm sure the 1% of people this actually affects will be really big mad and stuff.

You can make that claim, but the fact of the matter is that the US is a representative democracy, and our elected representatives make the laws. We are free to choose other people for the job if we want different laws. The vast majority of people were not lucky enough to be in a situation where their bumpkin ancestors just happened to possess a large swath of land, and so we don't vote to protect large swaths of inherited land.

They owe taxes? They can pay them. They can afford to pay them because they have inherited assets. "Oh no, they're gonna get a diminished inheritance. What a disaster." I'm not getting one, and neither are most of the people in the country. They'll still have their inheritance, they just won't have the land. And they aren't entitled to it if they don't have the money to pay their taxes.

I've watched chunks of beautiful Texas ranchland get sold off and built up by insufferable austinites for the marginal mcmansion. I will probably oppose a policy that encourages that and would rather the descendant of your so-called "bumpkin" keeps it.