US federal government spending obviously isn’t constrained by tax receipts. You’d think that would be clear in this day and age of consistent trillion dollar annual deficits. Thus spending programs should be judged based on outcomes and not nominal cost.

I’m all for a strong middle class. However, I don’t see how an inheritance tax that forces children to sell their parents farm or business to pay estate taxes is supposed to accomplish that though. If I wanted a large permanent asset-free working class I’d definitely aggressively tax intergenerational wealth accumulation, resting assured that the upper classes would easily dodge it with trusts, corporations, expatriation, or some other tax avoidance strategy. That sounds like an excellent strategy to crush the remaining middle class.