The more I think about inheritance, the more I consider it an unfair and broken system. Some children begin with more than the average individual will ever have the opportunity to achieve. Families are able to build political and business dynasties not on the basis of skill, intelligence, and hard work, but on the simple fact of the inheritance of wealth.

That inheritance is a thoroughly medieval, feudal system is also apparent in the fact that it still adheres to the bizarre and antiquated concept of primogeniture.

Discuss.

Yes.

I like your point about familial dynasties. Inheritance creates very unfair power dynamics entirely based on luck and circumstance.

I think I would argue that all but maybe a few of the deceased's things be redistributed. The heuristics we might use to decide what should be retained by the family would probably be very complicated though.

Welcome to the people just joining us--and sorry I didn't add you sooner. Branch didn't let me know you'd asked to join.

Please help get this conversation going!

I would say that inheritance in its current form has more to do with the explosion of capitalism in the past couple of hundred years.

At least in feudalism, the wealth of a family was reduced over time if a family had multiple children - the estate would get divided with each generation.

In capitalism, it is the whole money-making-money paradigm that enables huge accumulations to build up over generations. This is the real problem, and it is not until now that this accumulation has got to such ridiculous levels.

Why is it a problem if a family preserves wealth over several generations?

Interesting question Joe.

Do you subscribe to the idea of meritocracy?

I think a meritocracy alludes to a person "deserving" something. In the real world, the word "deserve" does not apply. It is utter chaos and we are in a constant battle to keep some sort of order in it. To say that someone "deserves" anything reflects on how decadent our society truly is. We have skipped being thankful for what we have and gone straight to being indignant and resentful that we don't have more. Instead of counting the money of others, it is better to focus on ones own accounts.

From someone who has barely enough

But how would you expect to get more money, Joe? By having it given to you or working for it?

To me, meritocracy is just a way of describing a functioning market - pay for work or value exchange. That does happen in the real world. Do you think that's a good idea?

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Personally, I think the person who died has every right to say where his/her money goes, whether that be donating to a charity or giving it to their children. While that may put their children at an unfair advantage, isn't that the point of why people make money? Not just for personal benefit, but also so their children are better off no matter what happens.

The biggest problem with getting rid of inheritance: what if somebody's parent or spouse dies? Don't the survivors deserve to keep their standard of living up, and to keep the wealth that they already had access to?

I agree with Kevin and Kieron. The parents created wealth and it is up to them, not us, to decide what's "fair" or not with respect to how they handle their finances. Taxing or confiscating inheritance seems to me to be a fundamentally illiberal concept -- in the name of abolishing privilege, you're essentially requisitioning hard-earned money, feeling entitled to something that isn't yours.

I hate to use slippery slope arguments as well, but this seems to be an attack on privilege in itself. Should we abolish private schools then as well? Parents paying tuition fees? Parental contributed savings accounts? A truly 'flat' equal opportunity landscape amounts to essential communism-at-birth.

@Jamil: I would argue that the money no more belongs to me than it does to the child of the person who made it. In either case, someone is getting money who did no work for it and who doesn't "deserve" it.

I'm not suggesting that a family be stripped of all wealth that is the result of a person's work upon that person's death; I'm suggesting that there are better ways of promoting equality and equal opportunity than a family getting to retain *all* of a person's wealth upon that person's death, particularly when that wealth is significant on a macroeconomic scale.

I'd support a higher inheritance tax. (Or the institution of one in the first place; I don't know if we have one or not.)

Who are you to say who deserves the money and who doesn't, though? You didn't make that money. I think we're looking at the wrong ethical question here -- we're asking what's best for society at large without any regard to the basic fact that it's not your property! So what if the child doesn't have direct moral claim to the estate? Nobody else but the parent does either. People shouldn't be punished because they worked hard and want the best for their children too.

And inheritance tax is another flawed concept: your money is already taxed when you work, taxed when you invest in the economy, and taxed when your corporation makes money. I support all these levies, but adding a death tax seems like it's going too far, when already a large percentage of that wealth has been taken from you.

But if the inherited money is taxed, then wouldn't that encourage the inheritor to go and earn their own money?

Again, there's the issue that you're claiming you know what's best for the inheritor. The fundamental issue is that this wealth is after-tax dollars that the parent wants to give to whomever he or she chooses. Either way, long-term business investments are driven by families (e.g. Heinz, Wal-Mart); a quick google and data from the CBO suggests that $1.6bn in capital investment is lost with the imposition of a death tax.

I personally don't think there should be an inheritance tax, even if it is just for the rich. I am not wealthy but I think that not being able to pass down what you have earned is ridiculous. On the other hand the rich should have much higher taxes. The division between rich and poor is reaching levels not seen in a very long time. Something must be done or we will become the serfs for the people who have the wealth.

None of this matters though when every dollar your country makes is produced by a private bank that charges interest on every dollar it creates. The entire monetary system is designed to screw the poor and benefit the wealthy.

I really hate to sound like I'm a crazy paranoid person but it is the truth that no one is saying.

Ian (and everyone who's made this argument): can you clarify for me why you feel that not being able to pass down everything you have earned is ridiculous?

And please do better than "because people have always been able to pass their stuff down". That's not a valid reason; that's simply blind tradition.

I don't think inheritance is even a system or a tradition that could be changed. It would go against everything we stand for as americans to force people to give their estates to the government. We have a massive government that mismanages its finances horribly, why would we want to give them more money?

And on a philosophical level, money is the castle that protects us from the cold world. Very few people have extravagant wealth, for most it comes down to simple security. How can you ask people to give up their security when no one will come to their rescue if they are in need?

A hypothetical. One rich man has two sons: a clever, hardworking businessman and a burn-out who has no concept of finance.

The rich man cares deeply for both sons, but leaves all of his money to the former. To him, it's not a matter of tradition, love, or even merit; it's a matter of investment. If he invests his money with the successful son, the rich man's legacy, with which most procreative organisms are chiefly concerned, will be better provided for in the long run.

Clearly he could've have invest the money elsewhere, but then it would not be readily available to provide for his offspring. It's really, like most things, quite Darwinian.