Comment by mercutio2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mercutio2 | Hacker News Reader

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Where did you get the idea “the majority of wealth is now inherited”?

I’m curious about your assessment of what fraction of wealth was inherited one and two centuries ago, and how you’re measuring the total stock of wealth.

Holding legal title to a thing is one extremely culture specific subset of wealth; being healthy, consuming goods and services is another, having status in your communities of choice is yet another, and control of the levers of societal power is yet another.

I am deeply skeptical of the claim that a larger fraction of titled wealth is now inherited than it was centuries ago, and I don’t see how you’d measure these other forms of wealth in a meaningful way.

I'm using a simplistic and quantifiable measure of wealth - capital assets. I'd also admit to using a short-hand of wealthy people as equal to billionaires.

I don't see the purpose in comparing billionaires quantifiable wealth to other forms of wealth considering the high probability that billionaires are wealthy in all other forms as well.

https://www.investopedia.com/more-billionaire-wealth-achieve..."

This is not a credible source for even the (vastly different from originally stated) claim that billionaires are more likely to hold title to inherited wealth “now”:

- it’s a survey. Rich people do not generally agree to do surveys. It’s a survey done by wealth management businesses looking for new clients

- it’s a survey across an incredibly short time period, 9 years

- it contains the quote “While more of new billionaires' overall wealth was generated by inheritance, the number of new self-made billionaires still surpassed the number of new billionaires who inherited the money.”

Finally, most of the effect this link claims to measure is in mainland China. I do not think billionaires inheriting assets is the main policy failure of mainland China, and it doesn’t seem very relevant for a context where you said “As the majority of wealth in the US is now inherited”.

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