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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

> stem from previous inequality of opportunity passed down through generations

There's a positive aspect to this as well, though. My grandparents (coal miner and steel miller) made sacrifices and investments in order that my parents could be the first generation in their family to attend college and become school teachers. My parents made sacrifices and investments in order that my siblings and I could attain a better life than they had.

My wife and I are making sacrifices and investments to help our children attain their individual maximum potential and satisfaction in life. Instituting a giant red "perfect reset button" for each generation precludes the sensibility of those investments and I believe harms society overall.

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Is anybody actually proposing a giant red reset button? Because that seems like a particularly egregious straw man to me.

Parents being good to their children is great. Parents sacrificing for their children is great. Keep doing it. But when what is given to child A comes at the expense of child B, then that is not so great.

As an individual, definitely please do focus on your children. But when we're talking about how we design society, we have to look at all the children.

Why? I don't see any way in which it would be "fair" to get an advantage (or disadvantage) because you happen to have been born in a particular family, which is a random process. Of course, there are implementation difficulties associated with it - how would you enforce something like that - but in essence I think it's a pretty good idea.

It's not a random process. Babies aren't allocated by the stork.

I have a dollar. I can spend that dollar or save that dollar. If I save that dollar, I can spend it later or have someone that I care about spend it later.

My kids, by luck of birth, were born into a family that values education; we read to them every single night, do crafts, science, engineering things, and tend a garden at home. Why is it fair that they get those advantages?

In addition to being barred from passing along the money I don't spend in retirement, should I also be blocked from reading to my kids more than some community maximum; should our library or museum trips be capped? Should kids be blocked from getting grandma's wedding band just because it has an economic value?

I don't work and save/invest only for myself; I do so for my family, including those who will actuarially live longer than me.

There are people out there that believe that sort of thing:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417997/professor-if-yo...

You and your family also don't exist in a vacuum - you benefit from the society you seem content to watch crumble around you so "your" money (a government created instrument) you made at a job that wouldn't exist without the society around you and using services falling into disrepair and rot because you're dumb enough to conflate hoarding wealth with reading.

> the society you seem content to watch crumble

Steady on, pal!

Beyond a certain threshold (or complex set of conditions) accumulated wealth can become self perpetuating. No U.S. legislation I can think of actually affects the sort modest wealth you're describing, but there is arguably some social benefit to limiting future returns to inherited capital.

Well, the argument about being blocked from reading to your kids is a pretty good one. Never thought of it like that. You convinced me. Thanks.

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