4 ms·

Intergenerational wealth is a fool’s errand anyway. The first (or maybe second) generation that didn’t work for it is just gonna squander it.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Yep. Plus end of life care is designed to devour your estate. And it is getting more expensive.
- kwere 3y ago
  euthanasy when one stops on being selfsufficient is the last gift to your own family, insteads of sqaundering hundreds of grands to keep the heartbeat going.
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
Or society is going to take it as seen in a lot of countries.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  Hey we just want you to pay your fair share! On top of the sales tax people paid when they bought your employer’s products, the payroll tax your employer paid, the income tax you paid, the sales tax you pay when you buy anything, and the inheritance tax you’ll pay when you die. Why are you so greedy? Just pay your fair share.
  - MrJohz 3y ago
    In fairness, most proponents of inheritance tax see it as solving the problem of wealth pooling in certain places and not continuing to be redistributed. You cannot claim to have a fair, meritocratic, and egalitarian society if there is a certain segment of the population who can automatically afford to outbid the rest of the population on anything that matters. If there's a limited supply of teachers and you can afford all the good ones, then we aren't going into the race with equal opportunities. I'm also sceptical of the rhetoric about wealth disappearing within a couple of generations, because that has historically not been the case in Europe at all. Germany hasn't had kings for a long while, but generational wealth lasts, and you can still see the effects of it in various descendants to this day. In the UK, generational wealth has a huge impact on outcomes, with a system of highly expensive private schools that institutionalise the privileges of wealth.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      > If there's a limited supply of teachers and you can afford all the good ones, then we aren't going into the race with equal opportunities. There is probably a very small supply of that. But I see little evidence that the rich monopolize them. They can't, because it's impossible to evaluate good teachers (and this probably holds true no matter what metric you hold to be the one that measures "good"). Why would a "good" teacher be noticed by anyone? Is it when they win the popularity contest, and the local paper does some article about how they're some small town treasure? I don't think those are good teachers, they're just "liked" teachers. And besides, even if "liked" means "good" to you, the rich aren't swooping in and hiring them as private tutors or even putting them into private academies. The public, misfortunate or fortunate, gets to keep those. Are they running some NSA-like intelligence gathering operation, seeing that one teacher that has some sort of impossible classroom grade average in urban hellhole schools? Because I am more than a little certain, even great teachers (again, by whatever metric you want) just aren't doing that. Those children fail not because they have bad teachers, or at least not only for that reason. > I'm also sceptical of the rhetoric about wealth disappearing within a couple of generations, because that has historically not been the case in Europe at all. Germany hasn't had kings for a long while, but generational wealth lasts, and you can still see the effects of it in various descendants to this day. In the UK, generational wealth has a huge impact on outcomes, with a system of highly expensive private schools that institutionalise the privileges of wealth. Sure, that's probably true. But who the hell looks at that and concludes "I've seen families that have remained wealthy for centuries and what I want for my own descendants is to become peasants and wage slaves instead"? Do you hate your own children, your own nieces and nephews so much? Do you just love everyone else's children more than them, somehow? And it's not like you can even succeed. They've had the loopholes planned for 50 years now. At some point you might manage to rabblerouse enough that you get the no-inheritance laws passed, but for people who can buy a passport in another country they'll just take it with them. One way or another. It's almost as if it's not about the billionaires at all, not the 1%, but about the people who are sitting from 80-82%. They managed to squirrel a million or two away, not even in cash, just a family farm or a home, or some other little piece of real estate. Fuck those guys, the ones not quite rich enough to abscond to some paradise island. So that's my plan. Get rich enough, myself or my kids or grandkids, to get the hell away from the envious before they manage to hijack the government and use it to steal from me.
  - skummetmaelk 3y ago
    You might argue that it encourages people to spend time with their kids instead of working all the time to try and build them an empire.

mattgreenrocks 3y ago

Yep. Plus end of life care is designed to devour your estate. And it is getting more expensive.

kwere 3y ago
euthanasy when one stops on being selfsufficient is the last gift to your own family, insteads of sqaundering hundreds of grands to keep the heartbeat going.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

Or society is going to take it as seen in a lot of countries.

NotYourLawyer 3y ago
Hey we just want you to pay your fair share! On top of the sales tax people paid when they bought your employer’s products, the payroll tax your employer paid, the income tax you paid, the sales tax you pay when you buy anything, and the inheritance tax you’ll pay when you die. Why are you so greedy? Just pay your fair share.
- MrJohz 3y ago
  In fairness, most proponents of inheritance tax see it as solving the problem of wealth pooling in certain places and not continuing to be redistributed. You cannot claim to have a fair, meritocratic, and egalitarian society if there is a certain segment of the population who can automatically afford to outbid the rest of the population on anything that matters. If there's a limited supply of teachers and you can afford all the good ones, then we aren't going into the race with equal opportunities. I'm also sceptical of the rhetoric about wealth disappearing within a couple of generations, because that has historically not been the case in Europe at all. Germany hasn't had kings for a long while, but generational wealth lasts, and you can still see the effects of it in various descendants to this day. In the UK, generational wealth has a huge impact on outcomes, with a system of highly expensive private schools that institutionalise the privileges of wealth.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > If there's a limited supply of teachers and you can afford all the good ones, then we aren't going into the race with equal opportunities. There is probably a very small supply of that. But I see little evidence that the rich monopolize them. They can't, because it's impossible to evaluate good teachers (and this probably holds true no matter what metric you hold to be the one that measures "good"). Why would a "good" teacher be noticed by anyone? Is it when they win the popularity contest, and the local paper does some article about how they're some small town treasure? I don't think those are good teachers, they're just "liked" teachers. And besides, even if "liked" means "good" to you, the rich aren't swooping in and hiring them as private tutors or even putting them into private academies. The public, misfortunate or fortunate, gets to keep those. Are they running some NSA-like intelligence gathering operation, seeing that one teacher that has some sort of impossible classroom grade average in urban hellhole schools? Because I am more than a little certain, even great teachers (again, by whatever metric you want) just aren't doing that. Those children fail not because they have bad teachers, or at least not only for that reason. > I'm also sceptical of the rhetoric about wealth disappearing within a couple of generations, because that has historically not been the case in Europe at all. Germany hasn't had kings for a long while, but generational wealth lasts, and you can still see the effects of it in various descendants to this day. In the UK, generational wealth has a huge impact on outcomes, with a system of highly expensive private schools that institutionalise the privileges of wealth. Sure, that's probably true. But who the hell looks at that and concludes "I've seen families that have remained wealthy for centuries and what I want for my own descendants is to become peasants and wage slaves instead"? Do you hate your own children, your own nieces and nephews so much? Do you just love everyone else's children more than them, somehow? And it's not like you can even succeed. They've had the loopholes planned for 50 years now. At some point you might manage to rabblerouse enough that you get the no-inheritance laws passed, but for people who can buy a passport in another country they'll just take it with them. One way or another. It's almost as if it's not about the billionaires at all, not the 1%, but about the people who are sitting from 80-82%. They managed to squirrel a million or two away, not even in cash, just a family farm or a home, or some other little piece of real estate. Fuck those guys, the ones not quite rich enough to abscond to some paradise island. So that's my plan. Get rich enough, myself or my kids or grandkids, to get the hell away from the envious before they manage to hijack the government and use it to steal from me.
- skummetmaelk 3y ago
  You might argue that it encourages people to spend time with their kids instead of working all the time to try and build them an empire.