00:00Let's start at the end.
00:03I have just died.
00:05Welcome to a Schein Family meeting.
00:07That's my dad, holding forth on his favorite subject,
00:10keeping his hard-earned money from the tax ban when he dies.
00:13The wealthy have found all sorts of legal ways to reduce their taxes.
00:18Have I hurt anybody to accumulate my money?
00:20I'm just saying that...
00:21I've taken a lot of risks in order to do that.
00:23My dad was obsessed with the estate tax,
00:25money the government takes from extremely wealthy people when they die.
00:28That's why some people call it the death tax.
00:31I don't want the estate that I work my tail off to accumulate to go to pay welfare.
00:38It's for you, your progeny, and so forth.
00:42The fact that you're doing this film tells me that your dad had a fair amount of money set aside,
00:46and it clearly is affecting you.
00:48This story isn't just about money. It's about family.
00:50So I asked my wife for some advice.
00:52I mean, the only way that I think anyone will ever see this
00:55is if you found a way to not make it some, like, poor little rich white boy story.
01:03Over the next three decades,
01:05$30 trillion will be passed from one generation of extremely wealthy baby boomers to the next generation.
01:13If more and more wealth can be provided to heirs without ever paying any taxes,
01:17we are on the way to a permanent aristocracy.
01:22Dad decided that he and Mom should retire to Florida,
01:25which has no state income or estate tax.
01:27But Mom wasn't happy.
01:29The question is, am I making compromises?
01:31You ask yourself.
01:32Wait, wait, wait, I'm in the middle of a sentence.
01:34It felt like Dad was choosing lower taxes over his wife of 40 years.
01:38My relationship with Dad is deteriorating.
01:41We worry.
01:42And I think that worry often makes us try to hold on to everything that we have.
01:46After I'm gone, the family will go on.
01:51Taxes are really about the wages that we pay together into our children's futures.
01:56But I found myself wondering, whose futures and at what cost?
02:01You can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few,
02:04or you can have democracy, but you can't have both.
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