Entry 5:

Pete du Pont is a former governor of Delaware and policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. He writes a columneach Wednesday  for the Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal.com. William H. Gates Sr. is a co-chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Dear Mr. du Pont:

You are correct that we have got it down to fundamentally different views about what public policy, or tax policy, should be. These are the kinds of disagreements that parties tend to walk away from with resignation that neither is going to affect the opinion of the other. That may be what should happen here but I cannot refrain from a last, short expression of rationale.

In addition to the idea that this is a better country for a tax that in some measure minimizes the size of the wealth of the wealthy, I suggest that those who acquire great wealth here have an indebtedness for what they have received, which was largely paid for by others. I speak of such things as public education, superb universities, order, freedom, encouragement to succeed, and models of success. In a practical sense, the wealth one is able to accumulate derives as much from the environment that this grand nation makes available as it does from any talent or effort of the individual, and it is perfectly appropriate that the cost of its maintenance be paid back in proportion to what is extracted.

A hypothetical may illustrate what I mean: Suppose two fetuses are summoned to appear before God and he tells them that they are the next two births on Earth and will go—one to the Ethiopia and one to the United States. He goes on to say that his treasury is running a bit low, and he wants them to help replenish it so he is going to auction off the opportunity to be born in the United States. He asks each of them to write down and hand him a sheet on which they set forth the percent of the net worth they will have when they die which they will commit to bequeath to God's treasury. He promises that the one who writes down the highest number will be born in the United States.

Would either of them put down a number as low as 55 percent?

Bill Gates