Left means a gift via inheritance, which is the exact opposite of an estate tax (it's not a gift or via inheritance, it's a tax on the value of an estate and paid before distribution).
They aren’t entitled to their assets. They only have worth because of civilisation. How well do you think bill gates would survive in a mad max utopia that Randians fantasize about?
Given the fact, as stated in the article that there are a myriad of legal ways by which millionaires and billionaires can skip paying the estate tax, it could very well have been the result of an intentional decision not to evade this by some socially-conscious dying billionaire citizen.
There is also a fair bit left after taxes: "Based on estimates of the average tax rate on estates, the February 2023 payment implied the death of someone possessing a fortune between $17.5 and $40 billion."
It takes about 30 seconds for the US National Debt clock (https://www.usdebtclock.org/) to tick off $1 million, so almost 2.5 days to tick off $7 billion. I'd say $7 billion covers much more than 3 seconds of interest.
It does improve it, by several orders of magnitude. If your point is strong enough to make without exaggerating, then use of hyperbole can only stand to distract from the point.
I mean... so I just noticed the "US Total Interest Paid" clock. That takes about 45 seconds to tick over $1 million, so $7 billion covers ~1% of the interest payments in a year.
That seems like a sizable contribution for a single person in a country of 330 million.
Great, so now all we need is another 99 people with similar donations and we could cover the interest for a year. Then you need to continue to do that every year forever because you have yet to make any movement on the principle