In a meditation on the handing down of knowledge from one generation to the next, a character in Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” waxes:

“We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march, so nothing can be lost to it.”

Would but that we all considered our personal wealth in the same terms, recognizing that what we give up along life’s journey – and indeed, at such time as our personal march ends – represents less a sacrifice than an investment in the greater procession itself.

That strikes us as the point of Washington’s estate tax, enacted by the state Legislature last year to support public universities and schools through the Education Legacy Trust.

Projected to bring in $100-$200 million per year, inheritance tax proceeds would increase the number of enrollment slots available at Washington’s public universities; increases financial aid to thousands of students who might otherwise miss out on the opportunity of higher education; reduces class sizes in local public schools; and provides educational assistance for underprivileged students.

Two great things about the inheritance tax: A) The overwhelming majority of families will never have to pay it, and B) those that do are sufficiently well off that it’s not going to make much difference to their financial weal. That is the genius of progressive taxation – those who pay the most can afford to.

Yet Washington voters will be asked on Nov. 7 to strike down the inheritance tax via Initiative 920. The Review urges a “No” vote on I-920, to protect our collective stake in Washington’s future.

As currently structured, the tax is levied on the 200-250 largest estates, out of an estimated 47,000 estates probated in this state each year. The first $2 million to $4 million of a qualifying estate goes untaxed; working, family-owned farms are wholly exempted to protect their passing down from one generation to the next, as are timberlands and most small businesses.

The inheritance tax is hardly novel. Our state taxed large personal estates from 1901 until 1981; from that point, a portion of the federal estate tax went into state coffers until Congress commenced a phase-out of tax at that level as well.

By our state’s new inheritance tax, which averages around 5 percent, the largest estates would not seem unduly burdened; that is to say, 95 percent of a heckuva lot is still a heckuva lot. Nor does it seem unreasonable to ask those who have reaped unusual benefits from our system of education and commerce to reinvest in that same system for those coming along behind.

It reinforces the notion that American society is at its heart a meritocracy – in which all citizens are given the same theoretical chance to get ahead in life – and not a plutocracy, a society of, by and for the rich.

Should the estate tax be repealed, the state will have to further burden the middle and lower classes with regressive taxation, or cut education programs. And for what?

If you want to talk about special interest initiative, I-920 is it – a tax rollback for the wealthiest Washington families that happen to probate a will in a given year.

As the playwright notes, ultimately we forfeit all. Our real legacy is what we contribute to the procession.

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Correction

• A Saturday article on school district budget cuts incorrectly reported the number of paraeducator hours that will be reduced. Hours by non-certificated instructors will be cut by 20 hours daily across the district.