Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton demurs from Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to repeal the death tax—the 40% tax on a man’s estate that the government currently claims because the man was rude enough to die.  Never mind that the man’s heirs might have a claim on the money—no, it’s Government’s money, says the Progressive Democrat.

Clinton claims she wants to build schools, cancel student loans, and provide health care to veterans with the proceeds from that death tax.

Let’s review the bidding.

Clinton has no intention of building voucher or charter schools; she only wants to build “public” schools run by her supporting teachers unions—crony capitalism in our education system.

Clinton’s wish to cancel student loans sends an equally terrible signal: that private citizens aren’t responsible for their own debts or their own actions: government will take care of it for them.  Which puts government in charge of those citizens’ choices, too, but carefully elides that part of her wish.

Clinton’s claims regarding our veterans’ health?  Compare that with the Democratic administration’s handling of the Veterans Affairs and its abject failure regarding our veterans’ health.  The Obama administration has taken no meaningful steps to correct that disaster (some might say refused to take steps), and she brags about wanting to continue President Barack Obama’s (D) policies.  And she says nothing to reconcile the opposition between her veterans-related claims on the one hand and her veterans-related claims on the other.

There’s another aspect to this death tax of hers, too.  Most of the estates being inherited (or which inheritance is blocked by the death tax) are in the form of small, family businesses and farms—businesses which usually have to be sold off to raise the cash to pay the vig tax.  And that leaves the surviving families, those heirs, without the means to earn their livelihood.