Jim Cramer thinks that the estate tax should be retroactively reinstated

[1] In Cramer's Mad Money - 8 Ways to Create a Free Stimulus (Seeking Alpha, 9/7/10), Miriam Metzinger recapped Jim Cramer's comments regarding the federal estate tax:

How can we get the economy moving again? Cramer outlined 8 steps to make this happen.

1. Estate Tax Retroactively reinstated; "Not one thinking person in this country can understand why the President and Congress have not tackled this issue," Cramer said. "This is the most painless form of tax, goes right with the surety of the other constant, death, and allows for a huge pick-up in revenue, a reduction in the deficit, and no damage done to the economy."

[2] Is the solution to the estate tax really as obvious as Cramer thinks it is?  One reason why "the President and Congress have not tackled this issue" is because there are good arguments for and against the estate tax.

Some agree with Cramer. For example, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Estate Tax: Myths and Realities (2/23/09):

Myth 1: Weakening the estate tax wouldn't significantly worsen the deficit because the tax doesn't raise much revenue.

Reality: Repealing the estate tax, or weakening it well beyond its 2009 parameters, would add trillions of dollars to future deficits and be fiscally irresponsible.

Others disagree with Cramer. For example, Antony Davies & Pavel Yakolev, Myths and Realities Surrounding the Estate Tax (AFBI, 12/9/09):

Proponents of estate, inheritance, and gift (EIG) taxes admit that the taxes generate little revenue, but claim that the taxes provide a social benefit by preventing the accumulation of wealth in the hands of generational dynasties. Evidence presented here suggests that EIG taxes actually cost states more in lost revenue than they generate, that they negatively impact smaller firms disproportionately versus larger firms, and that they promote the concentration of wealth by preventing small businesses from being passed on to heirs.

[3] One article on the logical fallacy of one-sidedness (i.e., card stacking, ignoring the counterevidence, one-sided assessment, slanting, suppressing evidence) opens with a fitting quotation from John Stuart Mill:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.