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Charitable Giving and Social Capital
When you pay estate taxes, you are creating (involuntary) social capital which is to be spent as the government decides. However, with proper estate planning, your can reduce or eliminate the estate tax, and to the extent needed or desired, you can create voluntary social capital. In this way, you (or your designees) can decide which social programs should be funded. Because of favorable tax treatment, you can give gifts (during your life) and bequests (through your will, revocable living trust or via beneficiary designation) or utilize other charitable giving techniques to provide for your favorite charity or charities without a significant cost to you or the your other non-charity beneficiaries.
If you have an estate large enough to pay estate taxes, you have the option to create potentially significant voluntary social capital (which you or your designees can control) through lifetime planning or to create potentially significant involuntary social capital (via estate taxes) by not planning.
Alternatively, even if your estate is not likely to be subject to estate tax (i.e., since your combined taxable estate totals less than $2,000,000 as of 2006), you may still want to consider planning to turn a modest amount of your assets into a significant amount of social capital that either you or your designees can control.