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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

IMO:

There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that you can be self-sufficient in your retirement.

There's something virtuous about living beneath your means and ensuring that, at a minimum, you are not a burden to your family, but that ideally you provide them support rather than siphoning support from them. In order to do that, it's almost a given that you will die with money left over. (The alternative being feeding the bloodsuckers who sell annuities.)

One person's "hoarding of wealth" is another person's "natural outcome of frugal living and appropriate planning".

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You speak of frugal living, but why live frugally amassing great wealth? There is a difference between having money to be self sufficient and sitting on billions of dollars

I think the frugal living they're talking about is not in the venn diagram overlap of those accumulating Billions of Dollars.

My understanding is that the point would be to not tax someone leaving a much less significant amount to their children, in the case of either an untimely or expected death, and rather using more targeted methods to prevent the accumulation of billions, like taxing those who accumulate billions.

Typically those billions aren't liquid, they're usually shares in some business you've built which you may not want to sell because it'll dilute your control in the business.

We used to call those fiefdoms.

It’s wrong to own your own business longer than conception deems necessary?

My money, my choice.

As long as taxes are paid, it's nobody's business what I do with my money, as long as what I do is not illegal.

But you don’t decide how much tax to pay.

Obviously many poor people will decide that few rich people must pay more.

No, but our democratic institutions do. If I ended up parking my riches in a particular country, I'm OK with whatever I have to pay (or there're enough legal mechanism to make it less painful).

FWIW, it's not "obvious" that many poor people would decide that rich much pay a lot. That's not the case in US, for example. Sure, there're people who want to "make rich pay", but in general US system is already fair enough [1] (page links to multiple bipartisan sources).

[1]: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/15/the-new-york-times-is...

> many poor people will decide that few rich people must pay more

I fail to see the problem, if you have more money than you could possibly use in a lifetime, why shouldn't that be redistributed through programs that benefit all of society, instead of whatever pet projects the rich person favors.

If the wealth was accumulated legally and fairly, as a result of creating such vast value for society that society willingly parted with their money for the goods/services from the company/ies that the wealthy person invested in and retained an ownership stake in, I don't find it obvious that society should have a further claim on the proceeds from the result of those transactions just because the owner "has too much money".

That person/family has shown some evidence that they're capable of investing money to generate an outsized return on that investment. I would tend to think they might be able to repeat that effect with the way they choose to reinvest the money, be it for societal value or charitable endeavors. I don't see evidence in balance sheets that governments have that same track record.

Something being legal doesnt mean it was moral.

True. They’re not entirely independent though.

Society has made murder, theft, and rape illegal largely because of a fairly broad-based agreement that those are immoral.

Where there isn’t broad agreement on morality, I would prefer to avoid passing laws to regulate behavior and allow choice. (Roe v Wade/abortion being just one crystal clear case of this tension which I believe is generally best resolved in favor of individual freedom. I am free to follow my own morals where they are stricter than the law; I do not force others to follow them.)

> I fail to see the problem, if you have more money than you could possibly use in a lifetime, why shouldn't that be redistributed through programs that benefit all of society, instead of whatever pet projects the rich person favors.

Who decides that? The great and scholarly politicians we elect?

Historically, a mob of angry people after their pleas go unheard for too long, like the French Revolution.

Sound familiar?

So let us appease mob violence.

What if I live frugally and buy investments with the rest. Have I wasted all thst money on assets or am I providing a loan to enable growth?

How many generations deep does "your family" run? Do you really think people with multiple billions of wealth were living beneath their means?

(I agree with your point if they are upper middle class or even have 10-50 million dollars of wealth). But when you are part of the top 0.1% of the population, there is no way you are living beneat your means to be self sufficient in retirement.

> Do you really think people with multiple billions of wealth were living beneath their means?

Well it's hard to argue that anyone who has positive wealth is living beyond their means.

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