6 ms·

Unequal distribution of rewards (i.e. according to merit) is fine and desirable (as a motivating force). The problem's roots are when the distribution of reward

• sul_tasto 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that we separate children from their parents?
  • Dumbdo 6y ago
    Interesting strawman. There are a lot of other ways to control inheritance than separating children from their parents.
    • dexterdog 6y ago
      Name one way that does not involve theft of property.
      • thundergolfer 6y ago
        Before we start naming ways, are you somebody who thinks taxation is theft?
        • dexterdog 6y ago
          Are you somebody who can prove that it is anything but?
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Not really, because as mentioned the mere fact that the children have access to their parent's wealth while they are growing up already confers significant advantage.
  • dang 6y ago
    "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• padolsey 6y ago
  Agreed -- it is certainly inheritance that mostly takes the blame here, since it allows massive advantages to accrue, unchecked. However, I do think that there's something to be said against even inner-lifetime accruement of obscene wealth, as that can warp merit as well. Where's the sweet spot? - the level at which there are sufficient rewards required to motivate the gathering of wealth without the risk of accruing such an advantage that would unbalance the playing board.
• postingpals 6y ago
  > It is the hereditary nature of wealth which is the largest contributor to long-term inequality. Hereditary wealth is a specific form of rent-seeking which is something liberal economics has no explanation for. It's like one of those things that never left the feudal era whilst everything else did. But I wonder why some who follow this type of economics think this is the sole and most important issue? There are many examples of rent-seeking and this is far from the biggest contributor towards inequality.
• refurb 6y ago
  Do you have any sources on what percentage of wealthy that inherit their wealth? From what I've gathered it's quite small and doesn't necessarily last more than a few generations.
  • redis_mlc 6y ago
    In Europe, most of the wealthy are descendants from 400 years ago. There's a paper that comes up in the US media regularly. What's fascinating is that most of the German name-brand companies that thrived under the Nazis are still owned by the same families.
  • fractionalhare 6y ago
    I don't have an answer off the top of my head, but I did some searching for you. A short article from inequality.org [1] suggests that most of the richest people in the world (Forbes 400) were born with significant financial advantages, if they weren't already wealthy. Since there are many more rich people than the Forbes 400, that doesn't seem too representative of the usual rich person. It's hard to find anything conclusive - there are a few research memos put out by what seem to be wealth management firms claiming that most rich people are actually self-made. There's a clear conflict of interest here, so I'm not sure we can trust those results. It seems understudied, and will take a lot more than 10 minutes of searching for relevant results. 1. https://inequality.org/research/selfmade-myth-hallucinating-rich/ https://inequality.org/research/selfmade-myth-hallucinating-...
    • refurb 6y ago
      Those “born on first base” — in upper-class families, with inheritances up to $1 million — make up 22 percent of the 400.[1] I wouldn’t call 22% of the richest 400 people in the world having inherited more than $1M to be evidence inheritance dominates the causes of inequity. I mean, another way to put it is “80% of the richest people in the world DID NOT inherit their wealth.” [1] https://ips-dc.org/the_self-made_hallucination_of_americas_rich/ https://ips-dc.org/the_self-made_hallucination_of_americas_r...
      • 6y ago
• II2II 6y ago
  Distributing rewards according to merit may be beneficial, but the problems with unequal distribution go far beyond hereditary rewards. Consider the income distribution according to jobs. Some jobs are assigned greater monetary rewards than others even if they are essential to the functioning of society. Much of that comes from our notions of status. I would argue that distributing wealth according to merit only works as a motivating factor when one is being compared to their occupational peers, which is something rarely seen in lower income occupations.
  • sdfin 6y ago
    Are you sure? I believe that rather than notions of status the main factor that determines salaries is supply and demand of workers.
    • tremon 6y ago
      How many nurses have seen their salary increase due to the shortage of nursing staff due to Covid?
      • sdfin 6y ago
        https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/covid-nurses-big-money-wellness-khn-partner/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/covid-nurses-big-m... https://work.chron.com/salaries-changed-nurses-23316.html https://work.chron.com/salaries-changed-nurses-23316.html I don't understand your skepticism. edit: corrected wrong second link
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > Some jobs are assigned greater monetary rewards than others even if they are essential to the functioning of society. Much of that comes from our notions of status. It does not. It comes from supply and demand, and how important that job is to the cash flow that will end up paying for it.
• Consultant32452 6y ago
  Practically the only reason I accumulate any resources or am productive at all is for the benefit of my child. I wouldn't think twice about committing violence against anyone who tried to stop me.
  • absolutelyrad 6y ago
    Exactly. And people who want wealth inequalities to fade away, can they explain people who have better looks due to better genetics. Then they carry for their next generations. Maybe also force attractive people to mate with less attractive ones so these inequalities also go away? Sounds insane doesn't it? This is equally insane idea. This is just unfair to everyone. It is wrong, immoral, unethical to tax the wealth of people, if you don't account for other inequalities in life. The inequalities will persist, just that when assets, money isn't that medium of storage, people will only value looks and other things even more, because that's how you'd effectively store your wealth, untaxable. The genes of the people become the platform for storing wealth in that kind of world. The only place where breaking or taxing people' wealth is agreeable is when they become too powerful and above governments. No other excuse. This is something seriously overlooked. Why do some guys get all the girls and some don't. Isn't it unfair to those guys that they have their needs emotionally met just like any other successful humans? If you are so fair, fix these problems. Everyone has feelings, and it's not their fault that they're bitter about it. Is it those men's mistake that they were born in this world? And they couldn't even do anything to rectify that problem when the baseline is so high to reach? Everyday I read about these people and it makes me sad. Thankfully I don't have any of those problems, but I can't overlook those who do have them. Atleast they'd have a chance in todays world had they pushed themselves and become wealthier. This isn't only about men, but women too. When you save money and forgo pleasures, you aren't supposed to be penalized.
    • Consultant32452 6y ago
      They imagine if the system were upended they wouldn't be low status. They are wrong.
    • postingpals 6y ago
• learnstats2 6y ago
  > Unequal distribution of rewards (i.e. according to merit) is fine and desirable (as a motivating force). This assumption sounds nice but isn't backed by psychology research. Extrinsic rewards can motivate and demotivate - and in general contribute to anxiety.
• xwdv 6y ago
  It is natural to pass resources onto your children. You can’t expect people to just see their children as individuals who must go fend for themselves. A stranger might just regard your children as mere “people”, but a parent see’s their children as extensions of themselves, and have a vested interest in ensuring their happiness and well-being.
  • tremon 6y ago
    You can’t expect people to just see their children as individuals who must go fend for themselves Why not? There's plenty of people arguing for exactly that mechanism when it's not about their own children. A 100% inheritance tax (with no loopholes through business or legal constructs) might force a lot of people to rethink how they vote -- because then, they can't use their wealth to shield their children from how society functions any more.
    • at_a_remove 6y ago
      Basic r/K selection. We're a K-selection species: we have a few offspring and we invest our resources in them quite heavily, like most mammals, and the higher the mammal, the bigger the investiture. As such, your suggestion is quite literally against human nature. We're not insects. This is the usual trap for people with Big Ideologies: they assume that we're all these tabula rasa entities onto which anything might be written (and should be).
    • xwdv 6y ago
      Because there is a bias that cannot be shaken. Look its easy to not give a shit about other peoples kids. Let other people's dirty nasty misbehaved little shits get nothing free in this world. When it's their own children though, people begin to apply exceptions. And that's why we end up with hereditary based transfers of wealth, rather than say donating all your money to all of society upon death. Your own child that you raised from birth deserves your wealth more than the wretched society (basically other people's kids). If someone else's child was run over and killed in a road, a person may pause to reflect on how sad and unfortunate the event was, but will quickly move on with their life and continue as they were. If their own child though was run over and killed though, they would be shattered, may not even be able to function well for quite some time.
• shams93 6y ago
  Then add in a tax system which aggressively taxes labor while leaving capital and inheritance untaxed, if we stopped taxing labor that might be enough to pull a whole chunk of labor out of poverty, just having work is no escape from poverty in a world of high rent and high income tax.
  • jayski 6y ago
    There is some truth to what you're saying, but also inheritance is massively taxed in most developed countries, especially in the US.
    • ModernMech 6y ago
      Estates are taxed at 0% up to $11 million dollars in the US. Moreover, that upper bound is indexed to inflation, unlike the minimum wage. I wonder why that is...
      • jayski 6y ago
        this is true, and 11 million dollars is a LOT of money. Id retire tomorrow if I had that kind of money. But inheritance tax is 40% above that.
• AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Which is culturally solvable, but would require require people to give up their children to be raised by the state and never be allowed to know who they are. That sounds horrible, but I submit that said horror is largely driven largely by a culture of possession and selfishness, i.e. people want to raise their own children because they want to shape who they are and ensure their genes have good survival odds. Assuredly there is a biological component that drives us to take an interest in our lineage, but we know that this can be directed towards similar goals via adoption and pets, so it is conceivable that a society could direct it not towards one's individual children but children in general. Of course, the whole 'raised by the state' thing is also a pretty uncomfortable thought to any society that has enshrined "freedom" and most people who lived through the soviet union, however I think it is possible that without the concept of genetically-bound inheritance of property and status that the corruption of such structures might be less likely. Not that I suggest any of this in serious mind you, it's just the kind of thought experiment day-dream that gets me through my workday. What this one has taught me is this: nobody actually wants a meritocracy.
  • narag 6y ago
    I'm reading this chain of responses and still haven't seen anybody saying the obvious: that poverty is not the same thing as not being rich. Instead, you keep digging in the misunderstanding, reaching absurd conclusions. In most first world countries, there is basic free education and children can study for a job with enough pay to provide for a decent life style. That's not to say that there're no problems. There are. Often accomodating immigrants from poor countries. Also because declining population and pensions and all that. But do you want to go full socialist because only rich family children get to the most expensive colleges? O_o
  • solatic 6y ago
    You should watch the documentary Children of the Sun, which describes attempts by early kibbutz movements in Israel to raise children communally and not directly by their parents. There were upsides (the children grew up with characteristics that we would think of as strong and independent) and downsides (clear early-childhood trauma, with unclear consequences).
• bluesign 6y ago
  "It is the hereditary nature of wealth which is the largest contributor to long-term inequality." This is not true, because when you don't have hereditary nature of wealth, there is no wealth. Why would you be motivated to accumulate wealth? Economically you want people to save money and invest, when there is no target to have wealth, people will over spend. Spending means economically staying at same level as population, not improving.