One of the ironical twists in the debate over the death tax is the way in which those who have inherited their own legacies seem so determined to prevent other Americans from doing the same. In yesterday’s Senate vote, one of the only two Republicans to side with Democrats in blocking a vote on repeal was Senator Lincoln Chafee. The Rhode Islander is known to vote with Democrats – he opposed the confirmation of Justice Alito – but this is a classic. He is the son of Senator John Chafee. When John Chafee died in 1999 after 22 years in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee was appointed to fill the remainder of his term. If there’s any senator who should be leading the pro-inheritance forces, it’s a senator who inherited his seat from his father. Maybe Mr. Chafee thinks only Senate seats, not businesses, should be inherited. Another prominent heir in the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat of West Virginia, had the decency to refrain from voting yesterday.

Then there is the New York Times, which ran out a column by Paul Krugman sneering at “wealthy heirs” and “powerful business dynasties.” Mr. Krugman works for Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Junior. We’re all for Mr. Sulzberger inheriting his post at the Times. It’s as American as Apple Pan Dowdy. But as the Senate debated repeal of the death tax, the Times also published an editorial sharply overestimating the cost of repealing the death tax, an editorial that defended the tax without discussing the elaborate trusts and two tiers of voting stock that are used by the Times Company and its owning family as a way of mitigating the effects of this tax on its own particular powerful business dynasty. Seems the Times thinks the death tax should apply only to the non-Sulzberger rich.

There are plenty of good arguments for repealing the tax. For starters, the many legal and accounting hours that go into avoiding and planning for the death tax could surely be reallocated to more productive activities. Investments locked in place to achieve the step-up in basis at death could be reallocated to more productive uses were the estate tax repealed and replaced with a carry-over in basis. One argument for keeping the tax in place is that it might decrease the number of people so affected by their own inheritances that they are determined, as a kind of revenge, to prevent others from receiving one without the government taking out a major chunk. But the current system doesn’t seem to have achieved even that.