Rent seekers galore - Life Insurance Industry lobbies hard against estate tax repeal

The problem with the state is that everyone seeks rents rather than justice.  The bigger the state, the more the rent seeking and the more labyrinthine our laws and reality become.  The only people who win are lawyers and accountants.  These are the wages when we commit the sin of trying to punish or manipulate others that we disapprove of.

Estate tax advocates often portray their fight as a struggle for fairness against greedy billionaires and spoiled heiresses, but as this American Family Business Foundation Issue Brief documents, it’s the multi-billion-dollar life-insurance industry who profits handsomely from the tax at the expense of family business owners and farmers, to whom they sell estate tax-related products. It’s no surprise then that the life insurance industry, which stands to gain an estimated 10% of its revenues from estate tax policies, is leading the charge to ensure that the estate tax roars back to life.

Pride and envy are at the root of all evil.