Comment by rodelrod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rodelrod | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> "Lauren Carroll Harris is a writer and curator."

Current generations were sold on the promise that you can be what you want. That you have the right (and almost the duty) to follow your passion. In reality the game is rigged. The article points this out correctly, in my opinion, and conveys the bitterness that comes from unveiling this illusion.

Among the writers and curators in my social circles (I would add artists, musicians, actors, …), there is a tacit agreement that if you want to pursue such careers, you have to (1) come from wealth, (2) marry a banker, (3) live frugally. I perceive some sense of happiness, or at least peace with oneself, mostly from the ones falling under option (3), even if they have by far the toughest lives.

Of course, there's always the promise of (4) become tremendously successful, but I don't know anyone who made it. And (5) give up and perform a job that people are willing to pay real money for.

Personally, I support high inheritance taxes to balance things out a bit. I think it's healthier for everyone. Those trust fund kids are in a permanent struggle to live up to unrealistic expectations and I'm not sure that's so great.

As for the natural wines detour, it feels quite weird for me. I don't see how they're much different from craft beer in 2005 or nutmeg in the 1500s. There are perfectly good wines for under 5€, drink that instead. If your friends are looking down on you for that, find new friends, seriously.

Inheritance taxes take wealth away from heirs, but unless there’s tremendous faith in the quality of government it’s not clear that it benefits everyone else. In the US the people who’d get richer from the government being flush with inheritance tax money are more Lockheed Martin / Blackwater / private prisons / Wall Street / consultants. In India it would be bureaucrats and their cronies. I’d rather the wealth be passed on and used productively, or squandered into the local economy. Happy either way.

This argument would apply to any tax but the question is not how much the government should tax or spend but rather if an inheritance tax is somehow (1) good in itself or (2) no worse than other taxes.

The case against #1 is that no inheritance tax unless absurdly comprehensive could capture many pre-inheritance benefits. The article explicitly notes how some postpone accepting their inheritance as a form of virtue signaling. The very fact this can be done shows that wealth is being passed down prior to any taxable event.

Perversely, the government doesn't need to spend the tax money. The government can create money for whatever it wants. It can also simply destroy money, to fight inflation and/or the yawning wealth gap.

Given how much USD is held by parties outside of US, a big part of the benefit of destroying USD would go to people outside of the country.

Inherited wealth leads to powerful dynasties, both at the local and national scale, who dominate local politics as well as economic opportunities. We see that in both India and the US.

> Personally, I support high inheritance taxes to balance things out a bit. I think it's healthier for everyone.

The difference it will make is so small you probably couldn't measure it. All that would happen is that it would apply to a handful of people each year who die very suddenly. The rich who grow old would simply transfer everything to their children before they die.

Even worse, this opens up a ton of loopholes that would only be exploitable by the very rich[1], leaving the middle-class paying the largest amount of taxes (again). Nailing down all the special exceptions in the inheritance tax code will probably cost more than you'd receive in inheritance taxes.

Taxing people simply because "they didn't work for it" is just another puritanical way of trying to punish people who were luckier than others. Doing it via inheritance taxes is especially puritanical, because it makes a mockery of fundamental property laws as well.

You may as well just proclaim "to each according to his need". At least that's an honest statement about the intentions behind the tax.

[1] Trust funds are already one of the ways to dodge inheritance taxes, as the "fund" doesn't necessarily hold cash. For example it could be holding shares in a private company that pays dividends. While tax authorities can liquidate any shares held in a public exchange to settle the taxes, they can't do the same with shares held in private companies[2].

[2] This is because there may be no willing seller at the price being asked. If high inheritance taxes becomes the norm, you can bet that every shareholder in a private company is going to regard a tax authorities need to sell the shares as a jackpot day, and buy accordingly for pennies on the dollar, at which point the taxes on the proceeds are going to be close to nothing anyway, and may not even be owed anymore.

Indeed for most people coming from low income backgrounds, if they are academically strong then they will likely go for a safer career choice such as engineering, medicine, finance, law etc

If you are a writer/artist/etc then likely your circle of friends will be disproportionately people with at least some safety net from home. That doesn’t mean it reflect all of societ

> Indeed for most people coming from low income backgrounds, if they are academically strong then they will likely go for a safer career choice such as engineering, medicine, finance, law etc

This sounds strange from a Finnish perspective. Fields with a clear professional identity and good career prospects are highly competitive, and it takes more than just being academically strong to get to study them. At least in my time, students of fields such as law and medicine were far more likely to come from wealthy high-status families with educated parents than those in more academic fields such as CS and history.

I used to know someone who joked he was the only leftist law student in his class of ~200. Leftist medical students were more common, but both fields were strongly associated with right-wing politics.

Keep in mind that money is not stuff. We can take all the rich peoples money and give it to poor and middle class - but this will not create one single potato. Instead we just have people spending more money on exactly the same amount of stuff.

You might suggest that all that money will cause people to produce more stuff - but whatever we produce comes instead of producing something else. We don’t have a large pool of non-workers that would suddenly become productive.

Giving poor and middle class people a bunch more money will simply drive inflation, empty shelves and lower quality overall. Which is exactly what we got with COVID related assistance.

What can you offer to substantiate your claim?

Here's $1000. Get some wheat.

Yeah we need an inheritance tax to subsidize the lifestyles of young folks who want to be artists lol

Specifically, for those who won't/refuse to live under (3) and will probably eventually end up at (5) anyways.

I'm sympathetic to the article, but the author is painfully confused about "the rich", lumping everyone with more money than her into the same category. For instance, she mentions "1 percent—the Trumps and the Murdochs, the very, very rich." No, most of the 1% is a completely different world from the Murdochs, over three orders of magnitude away from the very rich and much closer to the middle class.

"What about the, say 19 percent of Americans in the upper-class income tier": who seriously thinks that 19% of Americans are upper-class? She's confusing the upper quintile with upper class.

"The world’s future landlords, multinational business owners, CEOs and media executives": one category here isn't like the others. Landlords (of which there are 8 million in the US) really have nothing in common with multinational business owners.

Thank you, I had the same reaction - there's a nugget of truth here, but the article can't find it due to the author's innumeracy. In my experience, the typical aging parent who has some-but-not-a-ton of assets (a house, some stock, maybe a small rental property) considers that money to be their retirement fund, and intends to spend most of it.

I think a better mentality to take for aspiring artists is that you have to absolutely love what you do and completely dedicate yourself to the craft. This might mean everything you say above - live fruggally, marry a banker, etc. You might work side jobs for years or for forever. But if you half ass it even a little bit then it is very unlikely to work out.

You forgot (6) live in a civilized society.

At least in the nordic countries you can pursue whatever passion you have while still living comfortably and compromising very little, even if you have nothing to your name.

Civilized and extremely rich. I grew up in a country with a welfare system probably as supportive as the Nordics, as a percentage of national wealth (I didn't check the figures). I can assure you that my musician friends that didn't give up on a music career (as I did), most certainly have to make sacrifices to make ends meet. Granted, at least they don't have to fear generational debt in case they get an unlucky draw in the health lottery.

My country is only a hundred years old and started as nothing but farmers fighting for independence. We're not just "rich" - we organized ourselves exceptionally efficiently and gained wealth from doing so, even while paying war reparations to Russia and investing massively into the unbelievably generous social safety net we still enjoy today.

Literally any peoples around the Earth can do it, if they really want to.

That feeling of "really want to" is enshrined in the Finnish language as "sisu", "described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness."

I wonder if you've ever argued in real life, with real people, that there are no civilized societies in Africa. I'm curious how it went if you did.

I don't know enough about Africa to argue that. They seem to be getting their shit together fairly rapidly from a history of exploitation and oppression, but wouldn't know how far along they are.

So what are the uncivilized countries you're talking about?

Any country where one is forced to work a job they don't want in order to afford the basic necessities of life and able to pursue their passion in the vanishingly tiny amount of free time they have left after that.

Ok, so there are no civilized societies in Africa per your definition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com