3 ms·

There seems to be an important distinction here. This is not inter-generational wealth in the traditional sense. For instance, Bill Gates did not inherit his fo

There seems to be an important distinction here. This is not inter-generational wealth in the traditional sense. For instance, Bill Gates did not inherit his fortune, but rather he had some advantages when it came to funding of school, help getting started, and other resources. I see a lot of people mention inheritance taxes when this sort of topic comes up, but of course an inheritance tax would do nothing here. In fact, I'm not sure what could or even should be done to prevent this sort of situation. Does anyone expect parents not to invest in the success of their children? Imagine if you're lucky enough to be well off. Will you move to the worst school district you can find for your child to "even the odds?" An idea like this would simply never get any real adoption.

acdha 4y ago
One big one is dropping the “self-made” mythology and being more realistic about what we tell kids to aspire to. Our society has a lot of attempts to subsidize the ultra-wealthy or remove protections for lower-income people which are sold as some kind of fairness based on meritocracy rhetoric with a hefty dose of blaming poor outcomes on the people suffering them and simply recognizing that would make things healthier. The other big one would be earlier enforcement of white-collar crime laws. We don’t need to prevent hugely successful outliers nearly as much as their negative outcomes and not waiting until you have, say, peak 90s Microsoft or 2015 Trump to enforce existing laws would have helped even things out for competitors or stiffed contractors, and generated plenty of tax revenue to do things like help poorer people avoid the worst outcomes. We get a lot more out of, say, sending a thousand Appalachian kids to good schools and colleges than the marginal benefit of Bill Gates measuring his net worth in tens of billions rather than, say, hundreds of millions.

acdha 4y ago

One big one is dropping the “self-made” mythology and being more realistic about what we tell kids to aspire to. Our society has a lot of attempts to subsidize the ultra-wealthy or remove protections for lower-income people which are sold as some kind of fairness based on meritocracy rhetoric with a hefty dose of blaming poor outcomes on the people suffering them and simply recognizing that would make things healthier. The other big one would be earlier enforcement of white-collar crime laws. We don’t need to prevent hugely successful outliers nearly as much as their negative outcomes and not waiting until you have, say, peak 90s Microsoft or 2015 Trump to enforce existing laws would have helped even things out for competitors or stiffed contractors, and generated plenty of tax revenue to do things like help poorer people avoid the worst outcomes. We get a lot more out of, say, sending a thousand Appalachian kids to good schools and colleges than the marginal benefit of Bill Gates measuring his net worth in tens of billions rather than, say, hundreds of millions.