Many look to Warren Buffett as a business and charity hero. I think he's not so great although he admittedly has a talent for making money.
I had heard about Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway's practice of leaching off the estate tax scheme a couple years ago, and saw this article yesterday that also touched on the life insurance aspect of this leaching.
Buffett buys up smaller companies upon the death of their owners when the families and estates cannot afford to keep the companies going because of estate taxes. Further, Buffet is in the life insurance business. Since life insurance is tax free to beneficiaries, people put their wealth in insurance instead of more productive vehicles so that it can pass to their families instead of being confiscated by the government.
