It's outrageous! It's scandalous!
Bernie Sanders wants to tax estates of the wealthy. Can you believe it?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is proposing a one-time tax on the wealth of the rich at a rate as high as 3 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is going much further, proposing a 77 percent death or inheritance tax...
They're also both impractical and immoral ideas. Sanders is far worse on both counts. Both measures neglect what so many of today's self-styled revolutionaries fail to grasp: The Constitution enshrines the rights of everyone, and that even includes the wealthy.

Bloomberg says that Bernie's proposal "Spur Types of Tax Dodges It Aims To Stop".
The NYTimes says "Taxing the Wealthy Sounds Easy. It’s Not."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded by introducing a bill on Monday that would permanently repeal the estate tax.
None other than Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, said taxing the estates of the rich was impractical and immoral.

Oh, wait. He said the opposite.

Hold on there. Adam Smith supported, in no uncertain terms, taxing the estates of the wealthy. How could "manifestly absurd" and "unnatural" be misinterpreted?
But do you know who isn't so certain? The Adam Smith Institute.

There really is a consensus that inheritance taxes are not distorting and thus are "good taxes" in a manner that income and or capital taxes are not.
And we're really not sure about that.

This is a laughably good example of how modern capitalists have distorted capitalism.

But surely the Founding Fathers will stand up to the tyranny of an inheritance tax.

North Carolina's 1784 statute explained that by keeping large estates together for succeeding generations, the old system had served "only to raise the wealth and importance of particular families and individuals, giving them an unequal and undue influence in a republic" and promoting "contention and injustice." Abolishing aristocratic forms of inheritance would by contrast "tend to promote that equality of property which is of the spirit and principle of a genuine republic."

Others wanted to go much further; Thomas Paine, like Smith and Jefferson, made much of the idea that landed property itself was an affront to the natural right of each generation to the usufruct of the earth, and proposed a "ground rent" — in fact an inheritance tax — on property at the time it is conveyed at death, with the money so collected to be distributed to all citizens at age 21, "as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."

If that wasn't enough, Bernie Sanders wants to limit corporate stock buybacks.
Horrors upon horrors!

However, the issue has been a hot one, particularly among progressives who believe companies should be doing more with their cash than rewarding shareholders and putting money in the pockets of executives who ultimately benefit from higher stock prices.

That sentiment helped fuel a measure being proposed Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Bernie Sanders of Vermont who said in a New York Times op-ed that they want to apply "preconditions" on buybacks that would force $15 an hour wages, paid time off and health benefits...
While the measure seeks to address the wealth gap, Wall Street pros worry about its disruptive potential for markets.

"If the populist attacks become enacted, they will be meaningful," said David Santschi, director of liquidity research at TrimTabs, which tracks where cash is going in the marketplace. "I don't think it's the government's job to tell companies how they can spend money."

It's "Misguided".
It's double "misguided".
It's worse!

Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders want to prevent U.S. corporations from buying back shares or paying dividends unless workers are first paid benefits that the government believes they deserve. This form of socialism is called fascism. Political risk for U.S. investors is rising!

— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 4, 2019

Limiting share buybacks is just like Hitler!
Why America would never tolerate such an infringement on freedom.

For most of the 20th century, stock buybacks were deemed illegal because they were thought to be a form of stock market manipulation. But since 1982, when they were essentially legalized by the SEC, buybacks have become perhaps the most popular financial engineering tool in the C-Suite tool shed. And it’s obvious why Wall Street loves them: Buying back company stock can inflate a company’s share price and boost its earnings per share — metrics that often guide lucrative executive bonuses.

As Reuters wrote recently, “Stock buybacks enrich the bosses even when business sags.”

Or maybe this is all about greed instead.