> There should be no free money
The video states that 60% of the wealth in the U.K. is inherited, which is essentially free money for the receiver. Why is it okay for rich people to receive free money but not everyday people?
The video states that 60% of the wealth in the U.K. is inherited, which is essentially free money for the receiver. Why is it okay for rich people to receive free money but not everyday people?
I hate statements like this because they are completely misleading. other similar ones like "top 1 % controls ~50 % of wealth" etc.
This goes by networth. Imagine this, there are about 20 million college students, nearly all of then have a negative net worth. By that logic, if you hand a homeless person a single $ bill, they 'control' the wealth of at least 20 million Americans. you can add in tons of americans who have a positive net worth to make up for all that negative net worth. Its an absurd way of thinking. its especially problematic since most net worth is paper net worth (stocks that not even the owners can really touch).
Surely someone who just graduated college and has 100k negative net worth is far better off than a starving person in a desert, distended belly and all.
also networth is just a terrible metric. it ignores income streams, it ignores things that produce income like degrees, etc. it over inflates paper wealth as mentioned before.
And a big part of that is just the way we do the accounting. If you put the degree on the balance sheet as an asset it would change everything.
I'm not saying this is fair, not saying the parent post is right, but motivating people to do useful things for society after an UBI would be a concearn.
None of the UBI experiments show people that receive UBI participate in the labor market at lower rates. This is not a data-driven concern. All date points to this not being a problem.
My understanding is that all experiments were time-limited and the participants knew that at the end of 5 years they would be on their own. Makes one approach life in the short run very differently.
Passing wealth down obviously drives inequality but i cannot see a sane proposal to mitigate the impact. The more difficult you make it the more likely it is that only the very wealthy are able to pass on wealth. It is also obviously very unpopular with parents to suggest they cannot provide for their children.
Are there good ideas around?
Remember the context this is discussed at, the inheritance tax will not be the only change: the point is to make basics like housing affordable to everyone.
You will still have 0.5 * house-value more than someone who had no inheritance & is supposedly also meant to afford housing.
Or would government buy out his house, ending up with shit ton of undesirable property in the long run?
Congratulations, now your parents are dead and you have debt on your hands with major headache.
.. unless they just gifted the house to their kid once they reached old age. Then your law is meaningless. Unless you want to tax any gift in the family through the nose?
While rich people you were going after solved the issue with all sorts of trust funds, gifting and clever employment schemes.
So you gain nothing and people who were already disadvantaged loose. Yay.
Because consent of the giving person is present in the inheritance case but not in case of the government redistribution?
You too can build wealth for your children and grandchildren. All my grandparents were farmers, and most of their grandchildren have university degrees and a very good wage. I'm sure our grandchildren will have the means to start companies.
The western world is sometimes too focused on individuals, but make no mistake, wealth is build over generations. And I don't see the issue with that.
By why should this be allowed? By what right does there exist more than a life estate in any property? Fee simple ownership is administratively simpler which clearly has short term benefits, but absent some corrective mechanism to mitigate generational wealth fee simple ownership is thanatocracy; rule by the dead.
> The western world is sometimes too focused on individuals, but make no mistake, wealth is build over generations. And I don't see the issue with that.
The inherent consequence of significant wealth (for a small minority) being built over generations is the inherited disadvantages of poverty for a larger number. Generational wealth and equality of opportunity are mutually incompatible.
Because I want my genes to have a higher chance to survive. It's pretty natural.
> Generational wealth and equality of opportunity are mutually incompatible.
That is true. But there are degrees in which you can enforce this. I'm very much a proponent of the European educational system, where there are more fair educational chances for everyone (compared to the US). This creates equality of opportunity on an educational level.
But I don't agree with high taxes on inheritance. That's not possible anyway. Rich business owners have plenty of ways to pass on wealth to their children without it being considered as inheritance. When you would have high taxes, or even discard inheritance, then you would only hurt the middle class.
Either way, the recipient didn't work for it. It spends the same.