Did you know both Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt supported a progressive estate tax?

Question

Meaning no taxation of poor people but taxing wealthier people at an increasing percentage as the size of their estate goes up.

I have already cited the Thomas Jefferson quote. Here is Theodore Roosevelt:

"The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power... No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered -- not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means."

"Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective -- a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."

"One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now."
- THEODORE ROOSEVELT, NEW NATIONALISM
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/31.htm

Answer 1

Neocons ignore anything that is inconvenient by rewriting history. I doubt you will find any right winger who will even discuss the possibility that a past president that they revere supported progressive estate taxes

Answer 2

I work for a company that follows a progressive system when it comes to (paying for) benefits: people who make less pay less; people who make more pay more. It works.

Answer 3

Do you think that they anticipated a bunch of able-bodied free-loaders, living off of the public trough, back in those days?

Somehow, I doubt that they did. :)