How's amassing through inheritance instead of squandering is a bad thing?
I know a lot of people who are poor because of lack of skill or bad habits.
I know a lot of people who are poor because of lack of skill or bad habits.
It’s important to recognize that there could have been farmers with superior skills and work ethic who, due to factors beyond their control like luck or chance events, still find themselves in poverty. To attribute financial success or failure solely to personal habits or skills is an oversimplification that ignores the multifaceted nature of wealth and poverty.
Unless you mean the squandered billions was through literal setting piles of money ablaze or losing it all in a poker game to bigger billionaires, it seems if redistribution was the goal then squandering should be encouraged.
Taxing inherited wealth, and using the revenue to support infrastructure, education and research, is investing in many people's success.
Squander means to spend thoughtlessly or foolishly or wastefully. It's not a synonym of "spend".
Plenty of people with a stupid amount of money lack skills and have bad habits. The difference is if you’re born poor you’re at a disadvantage from the jump. It is harder to climb out of poverty than to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of your inherited wealth. Give me a break. Good grief.
Obtaining skills costs money and time. People in poverty are less likely to have the money needed and the free time to do so because they’re working a ton of hours at a low pay rate. Someone born into extravagant wealth doesn’t have to worry about survival and can do whatever the hell they want, even if it is to work hard and obtain skills via education, they have the time and resources to invest.
I’m not going to claim everyone with money didn’t earn it, but many don’t and the generational transfer of wealth is a problematic at the scale it has gotten to.
the glaring error here is to bring up people's lack of skills and good habits, and to conclude that the main disadvantage of being poor is the lack of money. It's a bit of an assumption that abolishing the rich is going to lift people from poverty to the middle class.
Sure you can work from an entry-level job all the up to the top. How many people can do this? Meanwhile if your parents pay for you Ivy League education you walk your way in to a well-paying job.
Being poor is a disadvantage and to pretend like it isn’t is to literally deny reality. It impacts literally every aspect of your life in negative ways. Terrible food is cheaper. Healthcare is expensive. Meeting your basic needs as a human is an incredibly taxing process when you’re living paycheck to paycheck and trying to support yourself.
I’m not saying “Abolish the rich” even. But the kind of transfer of generational wealth we have now is a detriment to society.
We let the rich have and keep more of their money than ever before. The wealth gap isn’t a gap anymore, it’s an abyss that you couldn’t ever hope to see the bottom of.