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"My family won't receive huge amounts of my net worth. That doesn't mean they'll get nothing. My children have already received some money from me and Susie and

"My family won't receive huge amounts of my net worth. That doesn't mean they'll get nothing. My children have already received some money from me and Susie and will receive more. I still believe in the philosophy ... that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing." - Warren Buffett I think progressive wealth transfer taxes are a perfectly good middle ground.

remarkEon 8y ago
I’m sure you’re a reasonable person and could come up with a reasonable tax rate on generational wealth, but I have zero faith that we will elect reasonable people to make these sorts of decisions.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. Here's to hope that maybe our descendants will learn how to do it right.
  - remarkEon 8y ago
    >It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families". Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to destroy generational wealth transfers is what made Civilization? No, and I think it's absolutely crazy to think so. It ignores every great family in history that did everything from win wars to build railroads.
    - digitaltrees 8y ago
      I think their argument was that civilization iterates on solutions to many social problems by adjusting policy over time so that human coordinated behavior is effective. The argument above isn’t focused on wealth transfer in particular. Civilization experiments with policy. At the extreme, there is a push towards consolidation and monopolies and this is counterbalanced by the rule of a unhappy mob. This causes policy to shift over time.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I think progressive wealth transfer taxes are a perfectly good middle ground. Wealth transfer is income, so progressive income tax without exempting wealth transfer from income tax would seem the most direct solution.

remarkEon 8y ago

I’m sure you’re a reasonable person and could come up with a reasonable tax rate on generational wealth, but I have zero faith that we will elect reasonable people to make these sorts of decisions.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. Here's to hope that maybe our descendants will learn how to do it right.
- remarkEon 8y ago
  >It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem. I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families". Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to destroy generational wealth transfers is what made Civilization? No, and I think it's absolutely crazy to think so. It ignores every great family in history that did everything from win wars to build railroads.
  - digitaltrees 8y ago
    I think their argument was that civilization iterates on solutions to many social problems by adjusting policy over time so that human coordinated behavior is effective. The argument above isn’t focused on wealth transfer in particular. Civilization experiments with policy. At the extreme, there is a push towards consolidation and monopolies and this is counterbalanced by the rule of a unhappy mob. This causes policy to shift over time.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> I think progressive wealth transfer taxes are a perfectly good middle ground. Wealth transfer is income, so progressive income tax without exempting wealth transfer from income tax would seem the most direct solution.