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Comment by exporectomy | Hacker News Reader

What I like about these schemes is they allow old people to enjoy the value of their property rather than enduring poverty just so their heirs can have an unearned pile of cash. So much value in the world is generated by hard working people then just dumped into the flaming rubbish pit of reckless children and spouses by inheritance. I wish inheritance wasn't the default way and you had to explicitly assign property in your will or otherwise for it to happen. The default would be that it goes to the state or something else not personally connected to the dead person.

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Why? So the will industry can make more money? If this was the default, almost everyone would immediately set up a will to give everything to their children . A lot of people want to provide for their spouse and children, even after they are gone.

> The default would be that it goes to the state

Because that's less of a flaming rubbish pit of recklessness than family?

To the right state, I think it is less of such a pit, yes.

tell us when you've found one.

pretty much any northern european state

I'll do that. In the meantime, are you going to keep doing nothing?

I for one will continue doing nothing, much better than taking steps in the wrong direction

Keeping active is good for you. Any steps that aren't towards negativity are better than none at all, I reckon.

Because then you could cut income taxes for people who work or cap gains taxes for people who actually save. The fact you pay more tax on things you earned than the inheritance lottery is BS.

Income tax is tax on production. Taxing on gifts/inheritance just makes it harder to move money. One person lost the the same money someone else lost.

Yes. That's why we pay tax to the state, not to family members.

This just gave me an idea. We could build houses that are returned to the state when we die. In return there's no property tax, no sales tax, no tax on repairs to the house during your lifetime.

That way people could afford a home that is theirs until they (and their spouse) die.

We tried this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_estate

The move from life estates and fee tails to fee simples was not a mistake. It was a core component of western society moving out of the feudal era. It's VERY difficult to durably invest in lands and estates otherwise.

We should be railing against the return of economic instability and lack of access to durable wealth for the middle class, not accelerating our return to permanently unlanded peasantry.

Homeownership is already heavily subsidized by tax breaks

To banks. Those interest deductions aren't for us.

You're just describing public housing. In the UK as long as you pay your rent and aren't breaking any social rules, you basically can't be evicted and can have your "council house" for life.

I believe there are even rules that allow for children to take over tenancy

I'd like the idea of the government having a monopoly on landlordism - like the Systembolaget, etc. but for renting.

You pay tax to the state bevause you have to. its not like its ever a choice.

people choose to live in places with higher levels of taxes, sometimes due to the associated benefits of those higher taxes.

There's a difference between choosing higher taxes and tolerating higher taxes. Further, voting with one's feet is easier said than done - the overwhelming majority of people can't arbitrarily move wherever they like whenever they like.

Arguably the benefits don’t outweigh the financial burden of taxes.

The human element is the common denominator to all failing (or failed) policy and there will always be winners and losers. mIn my opinion the only way to succeed is to give people a chance at winning instead of taxing them into poverty.

Most people live in the country they are born. Mobility is the highest of all time but it's still a very tiny minority of people who move borders.

Hacker News has a libertarian anti-tax bent that I think a lot of people on here assume is the consensus globally. It’s not. I’m happy to pay taxes and I like the benefits they bring society as a whole.

I can understand why decades of Republicans and to some extent Democrats deliberately ruining your public services would give you a scepticism towards taxes, but you have to remember that not everyone lives in the US, and even then not everyone has the same attitude

Here, the members of the state leave the pensions fund dry, the roads break down, the chemicals leech while they enjoy a private jet and get arrested when they travel to the USA on drug charges. Meanwhile, the prosecutor and the journalists trying to expose the corruption risk life and limb because these very same people want them dead.

I personally don’t want the state to see any extra money—in particular because this is a Republic, not a democracy and so, I don’t even get a chance to say anything.

You pay taxes because you enjoy benefits in return for those taxes. Benefits like being protected by police, being cared for in hospitals, getting an education in schools, etc.

The government doesn't need your inheritance to provide all this. What they need is for big companies to pay taxes as well. So instead of taking my money by default when I die instead of it going to my children, they should start by making businesses and the ultra rich pay proper taxes.

I disagree. A tax on (large) inheritances being passed to children who did not work for it is more legitimate than a tax on your labour.

Ultimately you need to get the money from somewhere. I'd rather it come from: LVT, inheritance tax, luxury goods tax, etc, than from what it currently comes from: taxes on labour.

Yes, you enjoy benefits from paying money to the state. That's why we do it. Maybe ordinary tax could be reduced if it got more revenue from estates. I don't know. The point is not where the money goes, but where it doesn't go - as unearned windfalls to arbitrarily chosen lucky individuals who are often unequipped to manage it effectively.

Such a twisted view. If someone works hard their whole life, and wants their hard-earned (and already taxed) money/investments to give their children a leg-up, who are you to say no?

So they waste half a million on a ritzy house, or spend a couple of months in Spain with their own kids. What's it to you?

Zoom out a bit and apply systems-level thinking. We all know that a small number of locally applied rules lead to complex emergent behavior. Millions of individual inheritance decisions have an impact. We can choose to believe that people, individually making self-interested decisions, aggregates into a net good, but I'm not exactly convinced based on whatever first principles are in play.

I'm not saying no. I completely agree with you. You must have misread my comment.

We can tell people the money goes to their kids, but tax it after the parent dies, so their feelings aren't hurt.

Nothing says representative democracy like a law that would take your assets and give it to the one party nobody ever wants to give it to.

You could say our representative "democracy" is a little too indirect.

> just so their heirs can have an unearned pile of cash

Do you think everyone should start out at zero and then build up debt until they are old enough to start working and paying it off?

Why is it more leginitate for some people to start at zero and build up debt until they are old enough to start working and paying it off, while other people start with a cool few mil in the bank and never have to work a day in their lives, being able to extract the surplus value from the former's labour and still enjoying a vastly superior standard of living?

Because it is not possible to forbid procreation to ones who cannot provide enough starting capital to their children. But one can still consider that irresponsible. It is false dilemma 'start at zero' vs 'few mil in the bank'. Providing to children some basic capital resources that are necessary for living in society is something that could be done by significant share of population.

> Because it is not possible to forbid procreation to ones who cannot provide enough starting capital to their children.

Neither possible nor desirable, what on earth made you think I was suggesting such an absurd dystopian notion?

> But one can still consider that irresponsible.

No. Making children is our #1 biological imperative. In a sense, it's the only "objective" purpose we have on this land: generate descendants before we die. It's absurd to say poor people are to blame if they want to have children.

> Providing to children some basic capital resources that are necessary for living in society could be done by significant share of population.

Not sure what you're arguing for here.

> Why is it more leginitate for some people to start at zero and build up debt

Why would some choose to bear a child and place them in such circumstances?

The things you read online... Like I said in another comment, making children is our #1 biological imperative. In a sense the only "objective" purpose it can be said we have in life is generating descendants before we die. It's ridiculous to say that the poor and capital-deprived persons in this world should abstain from starting families. The very suggestion borders on eugenics.

If it’s ridiculous to suggest the poor should care about the conditions they bring children into and should do it anyway, then why is it not also ridiculous to suggest that the rich should care about those conditions?

Many people in fact do put off or abstain from having children for exactly the reason that they don’t think they can provide for them.

> The very suggestion borders on eugenics.

This seems like a bizarre inference.

Of cause not! That’s preposterous. That should only be true for poor people.

Everyone? No

Some people, but not others? Also no.

Government already takes a big % of inheritance.

That's why some people decline it too ( Belgium).

Default going to the state is insane and ineffective. People would give it away more during their life.

Well if you give it away during your life it would be taxed as income, so not really a problem for the state either.

Gifts are tax free for everyone but the 0.1%ers.

It has nothing to do with income tax, since it was not income for work rendered - it was a gift.

That really depends on the country. In the Netherlands gifts over €3244 are taxed 10-40% depending on the specific situation.

> So much value in the world is generated by hard working people then just dumped into the flaming rubbish pit of reckless children and spouses by inheritance

Most of inheritance in France goes to the state which is the most rubbish pit of recklessness of all.

Funny both my grand parent die 2 years ago. I inherited some even being a grand son.

Also, after living 6 years in your wonderful country: I can wait to go back to the rubbish pile that is france.

To each it’s own I guess. Rugged individualism, rampant inequalities and industrial decay is not for me.

The tax burden depends on the amount you inherit

It’s between 20% and 45%

You can play with a official calculator here

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14198

> The default would be that it goes to the state

I feel like this is a fight you will never win, and it's one I have abandoned, but...

I think a better sell would be:

> The default would be that it goes to orphanages and adoption services

What happens to the old person's home when the financial institution goes bankrupt?

I suppose the homeowners would be the debtors, and since the institution went bankrupt, it presumably missed payments, voiding the contract?

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