Howdy
A static member has to be accessible *without* necessarily having an instance of the class with the static member. But... an inner class (non-static nested class) has no meaning in life until it's instantiated.
But the inner class can *inherit* them, because once the inner class is instantiated, it has access to everything in the enclosing class instance to which the inner class instance is tied. So to be a truly good 'helper' to the enclosing class *instance* (which is the way I think about inner class objects-- as helpers to the outer object), it would need access to everything, statics included. But again, since an inner class has no meaning until its instantiated, there'd be no point in putting statics in it.
Does that make any sense? I've never actually thought about this, although it seems like a pretty significant point!
cheers,
Kathy