You should have waited for me to talk about the Democrats (working title: "mutant Democrats") before you sent a correction that, you will find, has no particular reason to exist. I am talking about a CLASS, not about the top two or three individuals. In the heyday of the two-party system in England, the richest two or three Dukes (Bedford, Norfolk, etc.) were always to be found among the Whigs. It was the mass of the aristocracy that voted Tory.
As for the underclass, I will deal with that in time. And the fable of middle-class inheritances being eaten away by death duties is one of the tricks that the Republicans used to sell their otherwise indefensible tax reforms. A properly designed death duty does not prevent heirs from having a reasonable nest egg; it prevents them from inheriting the equivalent of three counties without having done anything to deserve it. And the notion that in order to allow a hard-working storekeeper (if any are left) from passing on his shop and a few hundred thousand to his son, you have to allow multi-millionaire rentiers from passing on their huge incomes and capital intact to their spoiled successors is truly bizarre.
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As for the underclass, I will deal with that in time. And the fable of middle-class inheritances being eaten away by death duties is one of the tricks that the Republicans used to sell their otherwise indefensible tax reforms. A properly designed death duty does not prevent heirs from having a reasonable nest egg; it prevents them from inheriting the equivalent of three counties without having done anything to deserve it. And the notion that in order to allow a hard-working storekeeper (if any are left) from passing on his shop and a few hundred thousand to his son, you have to allow multi-millionaire rentiers from passing on their huge incomes and capital intact to their spoiled successors is truly bizarre.