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My impression, and indeed my personal issue with inheritance, is financial inheritance. I have far less issues with other forms of inheritance. Sure I'm occasio
by ck425 6y ago
My impression, and indeed my personal issue with inheritance, is financial inheritance. I have far less issues with other forms of inheritance. Sure I'm occasionally jealous of the opportunities or skills others learnt from a young age but overall I'm just glad there are more talented, thoughtful, considerate people out there. The only part that ticks me off is arrogant people who claim to have gotten far only on their own backs and who refuse to acknowledge any good fortune (what you could call non-financial inheritance) on their part. Admittedly that pisses me off more because I used to do it a lot myself.
- dfxm12 6y agoMy impression, and indeed my personal issue with inheritance, is financial inheritance. According to this study[0], at least 50% of wealth persistence is accounted for by direct transfers from parents, i.e. financial inheritance, while earnings and education are only able to explain 25%. 0 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12535 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12535
- ryandrake 6y agoEducation is often a financial inheritance in disguise. If dad pays for your K-12 private schooling and entire Harvard education, how is that practically different than a direct cash transfer?
- fierarul 6y agoWould you want to live in a society where a parent would definitely not pay for better education? What kind of people would those be!?
- ck425 6y agoI'd prefer a situation where everyone automatically paid for university fees via a graduate tax and no one has the option to pay outright.
- fierarul 6y agoThis just moves the goalpost. Parents will pay for something that improves the odds of their children. Should a society where that just does not exist or is allowed be preferable? I think nobody wants that.
- ck425 6y agoPerfectly equality isn't possible but we should make it so any child can reach the height of socio-economic success. To do that we occasionally need to tear down the advantages others have such as in this case.
- fierarul 6y agoWhat does the height of socio-economic success bring you if you can't even help in any way your immediate family? If success means just the ability to buy stuff, the richest person gets the same iPhone, so why bother striving for more? Perfect equality means total inhumanity and the destruction of family.
- ck425 6y agoYet if everyone made supporting their family through the generations their primary goal it would lead to incredible inequality as the advantages of those born to well off family allowed them to make their kids even better off and so on, while the less well off could never catch up. We know from experience that excessive levels of inequality leads to destruction of society.