There's a little something called the Estate Tax (what many American politicians propagandistically prefer to call the Death Tax) which is supposed to follow a key mantra of democratic capitalism - humans are entitled to the wealth THEY THEMSELVES generate. Obviously the "they themselves" part is incredibly difficult to determine - mob bosses, drug kingpins, and exploitative capitalists lay claim to a large amount of "wealth generation", which is actually more like wealth theft or wealth extortion, but no system is perfect.
The Estate Tax is overwhelmingly important to the functioning of a democratic capitalist society, and it greatly harms both democracy *and* capitalism to erode or dismiss it. In 1941 (in the United States) the estate tax on estates over $50M was 77%. The maximum rate currently is 40%, and as we might expect has taken a series of hits since the 1941 high.
This is deemed "too boring" of an issue for the left to care about, which is why practically all effort on the issue is right-wing (not to be confused with pro-capitalist). http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/is-the-estate-tax-doomed/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://taxhistory.tax.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/880F5B5E62FE817F852571B0006851CA?OpenDocument
This is a global movement - countries otherwise considered respectable or "progressive" have abolished their estate tax - Sweden, Norway, and Canada alongside many others - Australia, Austria, Hong Kong, India, Israel, New Zealand, Russia, and Singapore. All of the abolishments have happened since 1972, and six of them in the last 10 years.
It is within this context, neither democratic nor capitalist, that billionaires are declared "generous" for self-imposing an estate tax. What is now "generous" used to be The Law.
Think about this conceptually for a moment - democracy and capitalism are so utterly broken around the world that BILLIONAIRES have to become leaders in democracy and capitalism. Think about going into a mom and pop store in the 19th century and explaining this future reality - they would throw you out for being a ridiculous lunatic.
I have no problem with truth being stranger than fiction. It's when truth is far more depressing than fiction that there's a serious problem.
