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"A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death?" Interested in your comments on the medical-industrial complex as applies to people with less than, say, $10M net w
by VLM 10y ago
"A 100% tax on the estate upon one's death?"
Interested in your comments on the medical-industrial complex as applies to people with less than, say, $10M net worth at retirement. Which is only about 99.9% of the population.
My grandparents were like that. Low level limousine liberals, a couple million net worth, retire at 60, a couple chronic diseases which were kinda expensive, a couple very expensive acute diseases, by the death of my grandmother a good 30 years later, pretty much nothing left. They spent their first 30 in the great depression and WWII so they really had only 30 years of good times to save up for 30 years of retirement. Personally I've never been alive during good times, I wonder what it was like?
Also interested in your views on the invention of retirement as a 19th century concept. It never existed before that time, never existed outside a small number of white countries. I don't think the "standard American retirement" such as experienced in the 1900s is going to be experienced much outside the 1900s or across the entire world. Historically inheritance was a white nobility concept, and not all nobility, in all white countries, all the time, had inheritable titles and estates. The fact that the prince of England inherited his title from the King of England upon death is kind of a stretch to claim that proves some random bubba in America is owed grandpa's old car upon his death.
- pjc50 10y agoInheritance (of real and movable property e.g. herds) is ancient in common law and applies in some form for thousands of years across most of the globe to people of all station who had the right to own such property within that society. It's very much not just a modern concept.
- spiralx 10y agoBefore the invention of money some 10,000 years ago people lived in small communities that collectively owned what they needed to survive, and there was no concept of ownership giving exclusive rights - families would own a herd, not the individuals within it.
- pc86 10y agoSpending a lot of money on healthcare isn't really an inheritance issue. Medical care costs money, and until such a point as we have taxpayer-funded/single-payer/free healthcare in the US, those services are going to be expensive. I'm not sure retiring at 60 with a few million in the bank entitles you to cheap or free healthcare when that's certainly not the case for people retiring at 70 with $150k in the bank. > Personally I've never been alive during good times, I wonder what it was like? If that's actually true you can't be more than 18-20 years old at the absolute most. I'm not that much older than you (31) but I didn't know a damn thing about retirement or elder healthcare when I was 20. I'm willing to bet when I'm 50 I'll say I didn't know a damn thing when I was 40. "Good times" are relative, anyway. Most of the people reading HN are not terribly effected by the overall US economy. Oh sure your SV startup gig might pay you $150k instead of $180k. But the folks here are almost exclusively students or in the top 4-5% of income nationally. Nobody here bags groceries for a living and is one paycheck away from collections on their car or a foreclosure. Those are the people for whom the broader economy has real implications. I'm not claiming that estate inheritance is divine providence or anything of the sort. But someone has to take possession of estate assets upon someone's death. I think it makes a lot more sense to a) give it to whom/whatever the decedent wishes in accordance with their will; or, b) next of kin. I'd like to think I'm pretty cognizant of my own ethnocentrism, and I'm sure that's more than a little to play here, but the idea that a "random bubba" is owed grandpa's old car makes the most sense to me when it's actually his grandpa and not just an old guy the next town over. Or even more so that it's not the state taking it and just selling it to the public.
- distances 10y ago> But the folks here are almost exclusively students or in the top 4-5% of income nationally. Just to pick on this, as HN is an international forum; I doubt this holds true much outside of the US. For example, in many European countries an average teacher enjoys a higher salary than an average programmer.
- SketchySeaBeast 10y agoI just looked it up, as a Canadian living in Alberta I make the average yearly salary.
- Jotra7 10y agoThe problem isn't your upper middle class twit neo-rich grandparents. It's the real wealthy. The 2k people that control 90% of the collective wealth oof the nation. I'm all for no inheritance tax up to like 5 mil give or take, then 99% after that. Slay the capital hoarding dragons and put that money back into the economy.