&gt; As for J.S. Mill, you might be surprised; he wrote that:<p>As far as J.S. Mill&#x27;s economics works go I&#x27;ve only read his &quot;Principles of Political Economy&quot;, so he might have had other beliefs later or earlier in his intellectual career, I agree. I&#x27;m too lazy to look for the exact quote, but I found a pretty good round-up of what I remember of having read in here (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econlib.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;Essays&#x2F;LtrLbrty&#x2F;gryMTR2.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.econlib.org&#x2F;library&#x2F;Essays&#x2F;LtrLbrty&#x2F;gryMTR2.html</a>):<p>&gt; Mill&#x27;s remedy for this maldistribution, which he proposed in the first edition (1848) of the Principles, was the institution, not of an estates duty, but of what we would nowadays call an accessions or inheritance tax, to be levied on the recipient and not on the donor of capital. For Mill, the merit of such a tax was that, unlike other arrangements, it need not transfer wealth from private individuals to the state, since it was easily avoidable by the desirable expedient of dispersing one&#x27;s wealth widely. Importantly, Mill favored a steeply progressive inheritance tax. This tax, though it would allow the transfer of a &quot;modest competence,&quot; would destroy all great fortunes in a couple of generations.