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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

>>The real problem to me is the fact that this money will get down to his descendants, who will have done nothing more than be born.

I always look at it from the opposite side - it's my choice to leave my money that I made to my descendants. If I didn't want to do it, I would have donated it or spent it on stuff, or simply written them out of my will. So yes, maybe they didn't do anything to "earn" it but it is my choice to give it to them - just like we pay for our children's education and clothing and buy them presents and gifts, one should be free to chose to leave them a massive pile of money. That money should probably be taxed, sure, but if we approach it from the angle of "should I be free to leave my descendants inheritance" then I think the answer is a resounding yes.

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> but if we approach it from the angle of "should I be free to leave my descendants inheritance" then I think the answer is a resounding yes.

Is the answer a resounding "yes"? I don't see why it should be. There are many ways in which we restrict freedom in order to have better social cohesion (e.g. fraud is illegal). If inherited wealth creates social problems through distorting, over generations, access to opportunity and unbalanced political power, then of course we should restrict the ability to pass wealth down generations.

It is very clear that inheritance allows accumulation of wealth (and therefore political power) beyond what a single human would (normally) accumulate (because of access to opportunities, starting from well above zero, etc.). This is clearly bad for society (reduces opportunity etc.). Therefore we should restrict it.

Just how collectivist would you like the United States to become?

I don't live in the United States, so don't really care that much what happens there to be honest. There are a lot of assumptions (and lazy labels) being used in this debate, and many models exist in which you don't have such extremes of wealth, and it's not all passed down. Attitudes to inheritance vary widely (look at the difference between attitudes in the UK and Sweden, for example).

If you really want my personal view (which I'm not sure of given the phrasing of the question): I would prefer to see a system where people have the opportunity to create great things, but in which their opportunities are not tightly constrained by what their parents did. I'd also like to see a system where we didn't have such gaping wealth inequality as it creates political inequality (and health inequality, etc.). This does not translate as me wanting (insert country) to become "collectivist" as much as wanting a different balance.

Are you against all inheritance? Or inheritance only above a certain level? Because I honestly, hand on heart, cannot see anything wrong with the idea that if I worked hard and have a house + some savings, I should be able to give it to my children just so they don't have to spend 30 years of their lives paying off a mortgage. It's my gift to them. How is that different than gifting them a laptop or a car, except for the scale of the gift?

I can see the argument for extreme taxation above certain levels, so you don't end up with effectively dynasties snowballing all wealth, but the level above which I'd restrict it is so high it would be maybe in thousands of people. Other than those extreme high levels of wealth, I think you should be able to leave to your kids whatever you want to leave(again, not against taxation on it etc).

This is against the grain, but I am against inheritance. It seems most egalitarian for us all to start at the same level. I would of course like the "lower bound" to be much higher than the state currently provides, but that's a different issue.

In The History of Western Philosopy, Bertrand Russell made an observation (to which I'm parapharsing):

In modern society, we have come to expect, almost demand, and seem to inherently know it is best that no political power be transferred by heredity. Curiously, we have not made the same conclusion with economic power.

If not inheritance how do you feel about parents spending on their kids (and grand kids and great grand kids and nieces and uncles ...) directly? Not being sarcastic. No money, No problems applies to me so I myself am trying to find where Id fall if I ever came to this kind of wealth!

Another related aspect to consider is that it's really not very hard for the wealthy to create an inheritance-like legal vehicle even without special cases like trusts.

Should it be legal to contract with someone that you will give them $1B now, and they will provide each of your descendants at least $X/year (or guaranteed job, housing, etc.) for the next 50 years? If this kind of contract remains legal — and I don't see how you could make it illegal without stomping on a lot of contract principles — then the only thing we're really changing is the timing and quantity of taxation.

Allowing inheritance makes intergenerational economic development possible for far more than the ultra-rich (who could already do it anyway). That doesn't mean taxation policy shouldn't be considered, of course.

Probably the question is not wether inheritance should be allowed or not, but how much. Let's cap it at 100 * median yearly salary? Or tax the rest, or whatever.

Or tax it once and for all while it's "earned". (Make tax rate wealth dependent above a certain line?)

There are plenty of policy possibilities to explore that are redistributive and not binary.

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