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I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200

I’ve long argued for massive estate tax rates on large estates in order to incentivize behavior like this. I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion (or whatever it is now), but it’s this dynastic wealth that I find borderline sickening. Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? Also, these giant charitable foundations/family offices are similarly off-putting, as they are setup as semi-perpetual institutions that often only make the minimum 5% distribution annually. (Another fix would be to jack that up to 25% upon death) Big estate taxes seem to solve for a lot of problems with appropriate compromises.

settrans 6y ago
An Open Letter from Economists on the Estate Tax To whom it may concern: Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving and asset accumulation and encourages wasteful spending. It wastes the talent of able people, both those engaged in enforcing the tax and the probably even greater number engaged in devising arrangements to escape the tax. The income used to accumulate the assets left at death was taxed when it was received; the earnings on the assets were taxed year after year; so, the estate tax is a second or third layer of taxation on the same assets. The tax raises little direct revenue- partly because the estate planners have been so successful in devising ways to escape the tax. Costs of collection and compliance are high, perhaps of the same order as direct tax receipts. The encouragement of spending reduces national wealth and thereby the flow of aggregate taxable income. These indirect effects mean that eliminating the tax is likely to increase rather than decrease the net revenue yield to the federal government. The estate tax is justified as a means of reducing the concentration of wealth. However, the truly wealthy and their estate planners avoid the tax. The low yield of the tax is a testament to the ineffectiveness of the tax as a force for reshaping the distribution of wealth. The primary defense made for the estate tax is that it encourages charity. If so, there are better and less costly ways to encourage charity. Eliminating the estate tax will lead to higher economic growth, which is the most important variable in determining the level of charitable giving. Death should not be a taxable event. The estate tax should be repealed. Signed, Milton Friedman
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Spending money rather than accumulating it is, on the ballance, better for everyone else in the economy. Positing it as an unalloyed good to be frugal and accumulate wealth (especially at massive scale) is extremely murky at best.
  - jackcosgrove 6y ago
    The savings rate is an important contributor to economic growth because surplus permits investment. However saving can hurt growth by reducing consumption. Savings can be thought of as a steady state rate of saving that the economy has adjusted for. Saving is a higher order effect that causes an increase in the savings rate, temporarily depriving the economy of the level of consumption it expects.
    - strbean 6y ago
      I'm curious what portion of new investment goes into IPOs, additional issues, VC, etc., compared to the portion that just changes hands between fellow 'savers'. If I buy $1mil of MSFT, I didn't contribute a cent to their payroll. I didn't create jobs, or grow anything. I just transferred $1mil to another investor, who will probably use that money to invest in AAPL. Seems to me a huge portion of investment is just moving money around a relatively closed system akin to sports betting.
      - postingawayonhn 6y ago
        By buying $1mil of MSFT you helped set the market price for their stock and therefore value the company. Based on that value Microsoft can then go to the market and raise new capital.
        strbean 6y ago
        That is presuming that MSFT ever issues more stock. They haven't appreciably done so in the past 15 years, and the same trend applies for most of the DOW. If MSFT never issues more stock, what then? Furthermore, helping to determine the value for possible future issuance seems like a very marginal benefit relative to the overall volume of stock trading.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
There are two reasons to support a hefty inheritance tax on wealth over $X million. First, it raises revenue to help fill the deficit. More importantly, it is friction against generational wealth. Bill Gates (and his father) have for decades supported inheritance tax and gave this as the explicit reason.
- pyronik19 6y ago
  In a "free" society, what basis does society have a right to say how much stuff you can amass? That or we stop pretending we live in a free society. I want society out of my business... if I want to give it away that's my choice.. if I want my kids to live like kings that's also my choice.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    >That or we stop pretending we live in a free society. yes, let's do that. we don't - there has never been such thing as a free society, and we don't live in one now. all society has rules - without rules, it's not a society anymore. Let's once and for all take away this absurd escape-hatch where one can avoid defending an idea on it's merits by claiming it restricts their freedom. If we truly lived in a free society, we wouldn't have estate law at all - wheover kills you should simply claim all your property.
    - throwaway987978 6y ago
      100% agree. The only free society is a society of 1.
  - jakeva 6y ago
    In a "free" society, what basis does society have to say how much stuff you owe based on your income each year? Or that you have to keep your sidewalk clear of snow each winter? Or that you can't just leave your car wherever you want? What about amassing as much stuff as possible selling controlled substances and brokering crime? If you want society completely out of your business, you're going to have a hard time.
csomar 6y ago
I don't get it, the Rockefeller family has an estimated net worth of $11bn today. That's for 174 members of this family or around $63m per family. While not a small amount, it's not outrageous either; especially that it's an old family, so they haven't really accumulated lots of wealth. You'd think compound interest would have made them own much more than that. On the other hand, Bezos, a single person, has control of a $1.58T company and you are totally okay with it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Am I ok with someone having control over the company they founded and have successfully led for multiple decades? Yes, I am.
bxparks 6y ago
I understand your sentiment. But the highest marginal estate tax rate is currently 40%, for amounts above $1M (after deducting applicable exemptions). That seems high enough. The problem is that the estate tax system is so complex, so full of loopholes and tricks, that no truly rich person with 2 brain cells and a competent estate lawyer will pay a fraction of that 40% tax. I don't know what the solution is, but it seems to me that the estate tax system is overly complex, too open to abuse, and needs to be simplified. It is unfortunately intertwined with Trust laws, Probate laws, Income tax laws, international tax treaties, etc. As far as I can tell, the estate tax exists only because of the "stepped up cost basis" feature in the US tax code, where all capital gains is zeroed out upon death by increasing the cost basis of the asset to the current market value. (Does any other country have this?) I think it would be simpler to eliminate Stepped Up Cost Basis, and replace the estate tax with something like a "deemed disposition" tax, where the capital gains tax is paid upon death (above a certain exemption amount, say $5M/couple), or paid upon transfer to another non-pass-through legal entity (e.g. an irrevocable trust). Oh, we should also eliminate the long-term capital gains tax rate, and all capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as earned income. I think this would eliminate the "carried interest" loophole. Oh, and we should eliminate Dynasty Trusts, which can last as long as 365 years. It's hard to see how allowing a Trust to last 365 years is good public policy. Oh, and so many other loopholes need to be closed. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much political will to tackle these issues. Estate tax law is a very obscure part of the tax code. Very few people care, except for the small number of ultra wealthy people and their lawyers who are taking full advantage of the current system.
- austincheney 6y ago
  An estate tax should be simple and Draconian to be effective. Simple is you have $10 million to distribute to anybody you so decide in your will. Only one blanket exception without restrictions or definitions attached. Everything else goes to the government. Any assets transfered out of country, as well as those derived thereof, are forfeit to the government, and any internally claimed jurisdictions, upon reentry.
cobookman 6y ago
> Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? I'm curious what the statistics are for a family remaining wealth over a long period of time. Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids, given a growth of just 4% it might end up with each generation getting a greater amount of wealth still. In the past large familes prevented this, but if the average extremely wealthy person only averages 2 kids. The dilution through children just doesn't occur.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  > I'm curious what the statistics are for a family remaining wealth over a long period of time. I don't have statistics, but a fun factoid is that the Grosvenor family, who own many properties in the west end of London, were originally granted those properties because the grantee was the grand-nephew of William the Conqueror. So wealth can last a long time. For those families who are luckiest and canniest, the only major threat is social breakdown as a result of revolution or being conquered. > Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids This is why primogeniture and entailments were invented. They were necessary to maintain dynastic wealth. In cultures where partible inheritance is more common, such as the US, dynastic wealth has a much shorter half-life.
  - tathougies 6y ago
    Familial wealth disperses much quicker in the United States than other countries. Comparing modern american economics to the descendants of william the conqueror in feudal pre capitalist society with an entrenched aristocracy is disingenuous. You cannot seriously use that as an example of why wealth will last in american families like that.
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  The book The Son Also Rises makes a fairly compelling (albeit contested) case that extreme wealth continues to have beneficial impact for hundreds of years. The author shows numerous examples but one of the most striking for English-speakers is that the Norman conquerors of 1086 are still, 31 generations later, over-represented at places like Oxford and Cambridge admissions and upper class probate court records.
paulpauper 6y ago
This would hurt family owned businesses. Under such a system, within a family, everyone would keep their money to themselves. Let's say your dad wants to open a restaurant, so you donate $1 million, and the business does well, but then he unexpectedly dies and the his net worth is assessed at $5 million. Now you are out $1 million due to the tax. pretty bad deal.
- JoshTko 6y ago
  I think that is the point? To reduce legacy wealth and force each generation to compete on a level playing field
- mleonhard 6y ago
  In your example, you could just make a loan instead of a donation.
- bena 6y ago
  Why donate? Why wouldn't you invest in it and become part-owner yourself? But you can also flip that around: Let's say your dad opened a Facebook, but then dies, why should you get $98 billion? You didn't do anything. Why is that now yours in the first place?
lemmonii 6y ago
>Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires? Because we live in a system which rewards good genes, and that is a very good thing. By instituting a generational wealth tax you will be killing the human desire for wealth on a generational timescale. Where does the money go? To other people i assume, you have now created a system where the evolutionary incentive is to leech from the system contributing as little as you can get away with. We live in such a system today but at-least there are some benefits to contributing more, those benefits are inherently that you can turn wealth into more children and transfer that wealth to them.
- chki 6y ago
  I'm very sceptical about the claim that the incentive to earn staggering amounts of money goes away if your great-great-grandchildren cannot profit from it. Caring about your own children and grandchildren makes sense because you actually get to meet them, but at some point most people probably don't care about their far-far relatives. Also, is this really your main motivation if you're Jeff Bezos? To make even more money? Doesn't the money stop mattering after the first 100 million and you're simply staying at Amazon because that's what you actually like doing? (Including having influence, shaping the future of commerce, etc etc)
  - lemmonii 6y ago
    >I'm very sceptical about the claim that the incentive to earn staggering amounts of money goes away if your great-great-grandchildren cannot profit from it. I'ts not that simple, we are talking about evolutionary timescales here. It's very easy to see that if we live in a universe where accumulating wealth will not benefit your descendants, then accumulating wealth is an energy and time sink which will be selected against. As for the second point i have no idea what Bezoz's motivations are.
- eggsmediumrare 6y ago
  This is a not good line of thinking. Good genes? What does that mean, greed? Competitiveness? What about positive human traits like empathy, compassion, generosity and contentment? The things that make society work in the first place? Plus it's not like billionaires have more kids. "Leeches" aren't poisoning the gene pool... Your "leeches" are the gene pool.
newguy1234 6y ago
Curious, what exactly stops these rich families from simply moving their wealth off shore? I'm sure there are many other countries that would bend over backwards to have these uber rich families living in their country instead of the USA.
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  It doesn't matter if you live in another country. US citizens are still taxed by the US government regardless of where in the world they live. Moving to another country accomplishes nothing. They would have to give up their US citizenship. Financial implications aside, few are willing to go that far. The financial implications are also large. You have to pay an exit tax, which would be substantial. And giving up US citizenship to avoid taxes is illegal, so there's that too...
- frabbit 6y ago
  What makes you think they haven't? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-years-since-the-americas-1-had-so-much-wealth-2019-02-11 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-year...
young_unixer 6y ago
What's wrong with leaving your wealth to your offspring? What I find sickening is people trying to meddle in other people's pockets.
- pech0rin 6y ago
  Because it exacerbates the divide between the wealthy and the poor in this country, creating classes of wealth that is so far beyond a normal person as to live in a different realm. It creates a ruling oligarchy class that is passed down not on merit or by work, but purely through nepotism.
- frabbit 6y ago
  There's absolutely nothing wrong in you leaving your average suburban house and penny stocks to your indebted children. Go for it. Live the dream.
rhacker 6y ago
How about tax rate for any money that isn't directly tied to employing people at 90%?
kabacha 6y ago
> I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion Really? You have no problem one person owning so much money? That's around 30$ for _every_ person on the planet, can you even wrap your head around that? There's no reason why a single person should ever own this sort of wealth, none at all.
- cyberdrunk 6y ago
  I wouldn't say that there's no reason, but it's just very unhealthy for democracy.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  The guy could literally buy every team in the NFL and have billions to spare.
gxon 6y ago
A caveat to this is, what happens when we actually solve aging and involuntary death? Will the world eventually be owned by a single, Bezos like individual simply by the weight of time and compounding interest crowding out everyone else? Would we be ok with a situation where the racist slave owners of 200 years ago are still alive and control the vast majority of the world's wealth and power? This is the kind of concern that isn't a problem right now, but will be one day. And it will happen in the blink of an eye.

settrans 6y ago

An Open Letter from Economists on the Estate Tax To whom it may concern: Spend your money on riotous living – no tax; leave your money to your children – the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue – living frugally and accumulating wealth. It discourages saving and asset accumulation and encourages wasteful spending. It wastes the talent of able people, both those engaged in enforcing the tax and the probably even greater number engaged in devising arrangements to escape the tax. The income used to accumulate the assets left at death was taxed when it was received; the earnings on the assets were taxed year after year; so, the estate tax is a second or third layer of taxation on the same assets. The tax raises little direct revenue- partly because the estate planners have been so successful in devising ways to escape the tax. Costs of collection and compliance are high, perhaps of the same order as direct tax receipts. The encouragement of spending reduces national wealth and thereby the flow of aggregate taxable income. These indirect effects mean that eliminating the tax is likely to increase rather than decrease the net revenue yield to the federal government. The estate tax is justified as a means of reducing the concentration of wealth. However, the truly wealthy and their estate planners avoid the tax. The low yield of the tax is a testament to the ineffectiveness of the tax as a force for reshaping the distribution of wealth. The primary defense made for the estate tax is that it encourages charity. If so, there are better and less costly ways to encourage charity. Eliminating the estate tax will lead to higher economic growth, which is the most important variable in determining the level of charitable giving. Death should not be a taxable event. The estate tax should be repealed. Signed, Milton Friedman

throwaway2048 6y ago
Spending money rather than accumulating it is, on the ballance, better for everyone else in the economy. Positing it as an unalloyed good to be frugal and accumulate wealth (especially at massive scale) is extremely murky at best.
- jackcosgrove 6y ago
  The savings rate is an important contributor to economic growth because surplus permits investment. However saving can hurt growth by reducing consumption. Savings can be thought of as a steady state rate of saving that the economy has adjusted for. Saving is a higher order effect that causes an increase in the savings rate, temporarily depriving the economy of the level of consumption it expects.
  - strbean 6y ago
    I'm curious what portion of new investment goes into IPOs, additional issues, VC, etc., compared to the portion that just changes hands between fellow 'savers'. If I buy $1mil of MSFT, I didn't contribute a cent to their payroll. I didn't create jobs, or grow anything. I just transferred $1mil to another investor, who will probably use that money to invest in AAPL. Seems to me a huge portion of investment is just moving money around a relatively closed system akin to sports betting.
    - postingawayonhn 6y ago
      By buying $1mil of MSFT you helped set the market price for their stock and therefore value the company. Based on that value Microsoft can then go to the market and raise new capital.
      - strbean 6y ago
        That is presuming that MSFT ever issues more stock. They haven't appreciably done so in the past 15 years, and the same trend applies for most of the DOW. If MSFT never issues more stock, what then? Furthermore, helping to determine the value for possible future issuance seems like a very marginal benefit relative to the overall volume of stock trading.

tasty_freeze 6y ago

There are two reasons to support a hefty inheritance tax on wealth over $X million. First, it raises revenue to help fill the deficit. More importantly, it is friction against generational wealth. Bill Gates (and his father) have for decades supported inheritance tax and gave this as the explicit reason.

pyronik19 6y ago
In a "free" society, what basis does society have a right to say how much stuff you can amass? That or we stop pretending we live in a free society. I want society out of my business... if I want to give it away that's my choice.. if I want my kids to live like kings that's also my choice.
- notatoad 6y ago
  >That or we stop pretending we live in a free society. yes, let's do that. we don't - there has never been such thing as a free society, and we don't live in one now. all society has rules - without rules, it's not a society anymore. Let's once and for all take away this absurd escape-hatch where one can avoid defending an idea on it's merits by claiming it restricts their freedom. If we truly lived in a free society, we wouldn't have estate law at all - wheover kills you should simply claim all your property.
  - throwaway987978 6y ago
    100% agree. The only free society is a society of 1.
- jakeva 6y ago
  In a "free" society, what basis does society have to say how much stuff you owe based on your income each year? Or that you have to keep your sidewalk clear of snow each winter? Or that you can't just leave your car wherever you want? What about amassing as much stuff as possible selling controlled substances and brokering crime? If you want society completely out of your business, you're going to have a hard time.

csomar 6y ago

I don't get it, the Rockefeller family has an estimated net worth of $11bn today. That's for 174 members of this family or around $63m per family. While not a small amount, it's not outrageous either; especially that it's an old family, so they haven't really accumulated lots of wealth. You'd think compound interest would have made them own much more than that. On the other hand, Bezos, a single person, has control of a $1.58T company and you are totally okay with it?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 6y ago
Am I ok with someone having control over the company they founded and have successfully led for multiple decades? Yes, I am.

bxparks 6y ago

I understand your sentiment. But the highest marginal estate tax rate is currently 40%, for amounts above $1M (after deducting applicable exemptions). That seems high enough. The problem is that the estate tax system is so complex, so full of loopholes and tricks, that no truly rich person with 2 brain cells and a competent estate lawyer will pay a fraction of that 40% tax. I don't know what the solution is, but it seems to me that the estate tax system is overly complex, too open to abuse, and needs to be simplified. It is unfortunately intertwined with Trust laws, Probate laws, Income tax laws, international tax treaties, etc. As far as I can tell, the estate tax exists only because of the "stepped up cost basis" feature in the US tax code, where all capital gains is zeroed out upon death by increasing the cost basis of the asset to the current market value. (Does any other country have this?) I think it would be simpler to eliminate Stepped Up Cost Basis, and replace the estate tax with something like a "deemed disposition" tax, where the capital gains tax is paid upon death (above a certain exemption amount, say $5M/couple), or paid upon transfer to another non-pass-through legal entity (e.g. an irrevocable trust). Oh, we should also eliminate the long-term capital gains tax rate, and all capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as earned income. I think this would eliminate the "carried interest" loophole. Oh, and we should eliminate Dynasty Trusts, which can last as long as 365 years. It's hard to see how allowing a Trust to last 365 years is good public policy. Oh, and so many other loopholes need to be closed. Unfortunately, I don't think there is much political will to tackle these issues. Estate tax law is a very obscure part of the tax code. Very few people care, except for the small number of ultra wealthy people and their lawyers who are taking full advantage of the current system.

austincheney 6y ago
An estate tax should be simple and Draconian to be effective. Simple is you have $10 million to distribute to anybody you so decide in your will. Only one blanket exception without restrictions or definitions attached. Everything else goes to the government. Any assets transfered out of country, as well as those derived thereof, are forfeit to the government, and any internally claimed jurisdictions, upon reentry.

cobookman 6y ago

> Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires??? I'm curious what the statistics are for a family remaining wealth over a long period of time. Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids, given a growth of just 4% it might end up with each generation getting a greater amount of wealth still. In the past large familes prevented this, but if the average extremely wealthy person only averages 2 kids. The dilution through children just doesn't occur.

jackcosgrove 6y ago
> I'm curious what the statistics are for a family remaining wealth over a long period of time. I don't have statistics, but a fun factoid is that the Grosvenor family, who own many properties in the west end of London, were originally granted those properties because the grantee was the grand-nephew of William the Conqueror. So wealth can last a long time. For those families who are luckiest and canniest, the only major threat is social breakdown as a result of revolution or being conquered. > Even with wealth evenly split between each generations kids This is why primogeniture and entailments were invented. They were necessary to maintain dynastic wealth. In cultures where partible inheritance is more common, such as the US, dynastic wealth has a much shorter half-life.
- tathougies 6y ago
  Familial wealth disperses much quicker in the United States than other countries. Comparing modern american economics to the descendants of william the conqueror in feudal pre capitalist society with an entrenched aristocracy is disingenuous. You cannot seriously use that as an example of why wealth will last in american families like that.
freddie_mercury 6y ago
The book The Son Also Rises makes a fairly compelling (albeit contested) case that extreme wealth continues to have beneficial impact for hundreds of years. The author shows numerous examples but one of the most striking for English-speakers is that the Norman conquerors of 1086 are still, 31 generations later, over-represented at places like Oxford and Cambridge admissions and upper class probate court records.

paulpauper 6y ago

This would hurt family owned businesses. Under such a system, within a family, everyone would keep their money to themselves. Let's say your dad wants to open a restaurant, so you donate $1 million, and the business does well, but then he unexpectedly dies and the his net worth is assessed at $5 million. Now you are out $1 million due to the tax. pretty bad deal.

JoshTko 6y ago
I think that is the point? To reduce legacy wealth and force each generation to compete on a level playing field
mleonhard 6y ago
In your example, you could just make a loan instead of a donation.
bena 6y ago
Why donate? Why wouldn't you invest in it and become part-owner yourself? But you can also flip that around: Let's say your dad opened a Facebook, but then dies, why should you get $98 billion? You didn't do anything. Why is that now yours in the first place?

lemmonii 6y ago

>Why in the hell should the Rockefeller’s of today be billionaires? Because we live in a system which rewards good genes, and that is a very good thing. By instituting a generational wealth tax you will be killing the human desire for wealth on a generational timescale. Where does the money go? To other people i assume, you have now created a system where the evolutionary incentive is to leech from the system contributing as little as you can get away with. We live in such a system today but at-least there are some benefits to contributing more, those benefits are inherently that you can turn wealth into more children and transfer that wealth to them.

chki 6y ago
I'm very sceptical about the claim that the incentive to earn staggering amounts of money goes away if your great-great-grandchildren cannot profit from it. Caring about your own children and grandchildren makes sense because you actually get to meet them, but at some point most people probably don't care about their far-far relatives. Also, is this really your main motivation if you're Jeff Bezos? To make even more money? Doesn't the money stop mattering after the first 100 million and you're simply staying at Amazon because that's what you actually like doing? (Including having influence, shaping the future of commerce, etc etc)
- lemmonii 6y ago
  >I'm very sceptical about the claim that the incentive to earn staggering amounts of money goes away if your great-great-grandchildren cannot profit from it. I'ts not that simple, we are talking about evolutionary timescales here. It's very easy to see that if we live in a universe where accumulating wealth will not benefit your descendants, then accumulating wealth is an energy and time sink which will be selected against. As for the second point i have no idea what Bezoz's motivations are.
eggsmediumrare 6y ago
This is a not good line of thinking. Good genes? What does that mean, greed? Competitiveness? What about positive human traits like empathy, compassion, generosity and contentment? The things that make society work in the first place? Plus it's not like billionaires have more kids. "Leeches" aren't poisoning the gene pool... Your "leeches" are the gene pool.

newguy1234 6y ago

Curious, what exactly stops these rich families from simply moving their wealth off shore? I'm sure there are many other countries that would bend over backwards to have these uber rich families living in their country instead of the USA.

freddie_mercury 6y ago
It doesn't matter if you live in another country. US citizens are still taxed by the US government regardless of where in the world they live. Moving to another country accomplishes nothing. They would have to give up their US citizenship. Financial implications aside, few are willing to go that far. The financial implications are also large. You have to pay an exit tax, which would be substantial. And giving up US citizenship to avoid taxes is illegal, so there's that too...
frabbit 6y ago
What makes you think they haven't? https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-years-since-the-americas-1-had-so-much-wealth-2019-02-11 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-year...

young_unixer 6y ago

What's wrong with leaving your wealth to your offspring? What I find sickening is people trying to meddle in other people's pockets.

pech0rin 6y ago
Because it exacerbates the divide between the wealthy and the poor in this country, creating classes of wealth that is so far beyond a normal person as to live in a different realm. It creates a ruling oligarchy class that is passed down not on merit or by work, but purely through nepotism.
frabbit 6y ago
There's absolutely nothing wrong in you leaving your average suburban house and penny stocks to your indebted children. Go for it. Live the dream.

rhacker 6y ago

How about tax rate for any money that isn't directly tied to employing people at 90%?

kabacha 6y ago

> I have no problem at all with Bezos being worth $200 billion Really? You have no problem one person owning so much money? That's around 30$ for _every_ person on the planet, can you even wrap your head around that? There's no reason why a single person should ever own this sort of wealth, none at all.

cyberdrunk 6y ago
I wouldn't say that there's no reason, but it's just very unhealthy for democracy.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
The guy could literally buy every team in the NFL and have billions to spare.

gxon 6y ago

A caveat to this is, what happens when we actually solve aging and involuntary death? Will the world eventually be owned by a single, Bezos like individual simply by the weight of time and compounding interest crowding out everyone else? Would we be ok with a situation where the racist slave owners of 200 years ago are still alive and control the vast majority of the world's wealth and power? This is the kind of concern that isn't a problem right now, but will be one day. And it will happen in the blink of an eye.