> "The reason the percentage of heirs has decreased is not that fewer people are inheriting great fortunes, but that more people are making them."
It's likely that many of the inheritances of 1982 were the echo of the corrupt and monopolistic industrialism in the 19th century. Is it a bad thing that the great individual fortunes that were built a century earlier couldn't be amassed in the 20th? Have we returned to a 19th-century environment now, with technology taking the place of railroads and telegraphs? On that note...
> "the major sectors of the economy were either organized as government-backed cartels or dominated by a few oligopolistic corporations."
Unless I see a FAANG company go out of business, soon, and as abruptly as it appeared, I'm inclined to think we're entering a new oligopolistic era. Just because these companies were recently startups doesn't mean they aren't entrenched now.
(As an aside regarding the wealth tax, that actually would have worked to reduce the number of heirs at the top of the list in 1982 had it been enacted some time earlier.)