Marlene Engelhorn hadn’t given much thought to the wealth that surrounded her as she grew up. She always considered the fortune, inherited from Friedrich Engelhorn, the 19th-century founder of the German chemical giant BASF, to be her family’s money rather than hers.
I learned recently enough that this is because the Reagan administration came up with the (in fairness, an absolutely genius move given their political viewpoint) the great idea of calling it a “death tax”.