One of the fundamental justifications for the estate tax is that bequests often have negative effects on recipients. Receiving large wealth without working for it can be ruinous. Heirs who might otherwise lead useful and productive lives instead lead lives of waste and debauchery.

Paris Hilton (of the Hilton Hotels fortune) comes to mind. She fills the gossip columns almost daily with her exploits, which usually involve appearances at extravagant parties wearing little clothing. Had she been born poor instead of rich, perhaps she might be a useful member of society instead of an embarrassing stain on her family's good name.

I don't mean to pick on Hilton. The gossip pages have been filled with her ilk for years. The sight of extremely wealthy people blowing the family fortune on $3,000 pairs of shoes or similar excesses has always titillated the hoi polloi. That is why page 6 in the New York Post is so much fun to read.

Over 100 years ago, Andrew Carnegie, probably the second richest man in America (after John D. Rockefeller), argued strenuously, "He who dies possessed of enormous sums ... will die disgraced." In part, that is because he viewed the receipt of great wealth by mere dint of being related to those who made it, without having contributed at all to its creation, to be severely debilitating to the receiver.

Said Carnegie, "That the parent who leaves his son enormous wealth generally deadens the talents and energies of the son, and tempts him to lead a less useful and less worthy life than he otherwise would, seems to me capable of proof which cannot be gainsaid."

For this reason, estimates of the amount of wealth that will be transferred to future generations are a matter of macroeconomic importance. If the numbers are as large as some calculations suggest, we could be looking forward to a generation that will do little more than sit on its collective butt.

The issue got started 10 years ago, when economists James Avery and Michael Rendell calculated that the Americans stood to receive some $10 trillion in inheritances by 2040. In 1999, Boston College economists John Havens and Paul Schervish raised this figure to between $41 trillion and $136 trillion by 2052. Earlier this year, they concluded that this estimate is still on track, despite the large stock market losses of recent years.