To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (destroy the family, destroy individualism, everything has to be the same).
It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive.
In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work.
Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children born poor, and 'guaranteed basic income' for children born rich. That is more dehumanizing than not being allowed to pass off inheritance.
> 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy.
"Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".
I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wealthy heavily "because they earned it" while at the same time hearing support for what amounts to aristocracy.
The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
This is all beside the pont anyway. Increasing tax revenue will not solve any of the problems you are trying to solve. As I said elsewhere, you could tax 100% of every billionaire in this country, leaving them homeless, and you would not have collected enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. You could sell off your entire "aristocracy" and it wouldn't make a dent. The strategy of "just spend more money" does not work.
And how are we to do that without taking money from somewhere and using it to help people up?
> The idea that we have to come up with a good reason _not_ to heavily tax people is backwards. The only reason you need is that people have rights. A man owns what is his and you have absolutely no right to it.
Case in point. You can't take money away from rich kids via inheritance tax (nevermind that they'd still have innumerable advantages from growing up in a wealthy household), you can't tax the wealthy, but you're somehow supposed to help poor children up anyway. Who's paying for that?
Furthermore, I disagree with the statement on the grounds that national infrastructure and protections are doubtless large contributors to anyone being able to amass that kind of wealth in the first place, therefore it is not unreasonable to expect that a portion of that wealth be contributed back.
I think you would find that to make everything equal, you would have to take children away from their parents at an early age. Because having caring, loving parents is also an advantage. At least so far not all kids in a school turn out the same, even thought they all have the same teachers and lessons. Must be the parents that make the difference.
I don't think that would be desirable. I don't want my children to be raised in a government institution to make them exactly the same as everybody else, just for the sake of an arbitrary metric ("equality" measured in some arbitrarily chosen terms).
In fact why not get rid of parents altogether, and create children in labs? I bet that is the socialist dream fulfilled.
(Sorry about the cheap comment - I couldn't resist)
Also, sorry, but I don't care how productive other people's kids are, or "the economy". I care about the well-being of my kids. yes, I want everybody to be happy if possible, but my kids have priority to me.
And what exactly is "hypocritical"? What are you referring to? You assume everybody should have the same starting position in life, and I reject that notion.
Children of course are not at fault for the actions of their parents (like if they are drug addicts and have an unwanted child they can't afford, the child is not to blame - but neither are other people's children or parents). But that doesn't mean every child should automatically get the same "starting money". This is not a game of monopoly.
As I said - people compete to give their children the best odds. That is not even unique to humans, it is true for all of nature.
If you take that away, why bother with anything? Why should you bother to get a good job to be able to support your family? Just fuck and live the good life, and dump your children on society to be taken care of.
Already in the west everybody gets a pretty good deal in the form of an education.
* There is a caveat that it should be a new investment rather than a purchase of the existing one, the latter is zero-sum.
Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.
> So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich?
This is such a twisting of my words I am not even sure how to respond. Are you saying the only way out of poverty is to steal everything you want from the rich?
Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?