Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Only the Foolish Pay the 45% Estate Tax

Nobody pays the 45 percent estate tax unless they want to or they're not too bright.

January 30, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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By now, you must have heard about Tom Perkins's letter to the Wall Street Journal (Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?), where he made a foolish comparison to the "parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.' "

The PR disaster Perkins ignited -- yeah, he is that Perkins from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins -- ignited a firestorm. The reaction was so intense he had to go on Bloomberg TV to sort of, but not quite, apologize. In the course of his comments, he said several other really dumb things (you may be detecting a pattern here) on unrelated subjects.