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you have to weigh the removal of that incentive against the degree to which the ability to give your offspring a leg up makes the system inefficient and unappea

you have to weigh the removal of that incentive against the degree to which the ability to give your offspring a leg up makes the system inefficient and unappealing see Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers on eg. inheritance taxes: http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/10/estate_tax_and_founding_fathers http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/10/estate_tax_... > "A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural." Smith said: "There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."

jimmywanger 10y ago
We're not even talking about money at this point. The study is talking about educational level of children vs. the education of parents and grandparents. It stands to reason that highly educated parents produce highly educated children - they've been through college, probably know what to do in college wrt financial aid, and probably have more books in the house and talk about more educated things around the dinner table. How is that ability to give your offspring a leg up going to be removed?
- RodericDay 10y ago
  I'm talking generally about "removing the incentive", using the estate tax as an example of removing an incentive that may nevertheless be desirable for efficient market outcomes. I'm not saying that it maps out 1:1 with this situation. Just observing that the fact that something being a positive incentive isn't sufficient to justify its persistence.