Interestingly, "death tax" was a term of propoganda created for the organized campaign against the estate tax.

The story is told in the article below; it's worth a few bucks. It will change how you look at politics forever. Probably, like almost all Americans, you have no idea how carefully planned many of the political arguments everyone repeats [EDIT: as everyday conversation] are, and by just a few people:

http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19132