0 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: On Rights of Inheritance - why high inheritance taxes are justified
So, let it be known, I agree with the article and the OP: any justification a *naive child* may have for being given inheritance, on the basis of his desert, is shared by the non-inheritor; one ought not be given a resource they have not earned except in the consideration that all *equally* have the right to that which is not earned. This, to me, quite suitably justifies my position that the OP is on the mark. Any other quibbling I could do over that would devolve to a discussion on the rightfulness of actually justifying equality (through basic discussions of symmetry of justification and the role rejection of contradiction plays in the understanding of knowledge).
That aside, however, there *is* an argument that may be made to counter this: that extraordinary feats of accomplishment, "megaprojects" if you will, require vast concentrations of wealth. Megaprojects take many shapes, from giant vanity statues and other such "wonders" of the world, to the research of nuclear energy or probes that defeat our natural ignorances such as the Large Hadron Collider, to innovations such as SpaceX and Tesla, all enabled by the pooling of wealth.
Now, you could ask, "why would inheritance be necessary to accomplish great things in concert?" Extrapersonal groups exist all the time which are not directly the ward of a single person, and certainly some pools of wealth have managed to be accrued in single lifetimes.
But if we are being honest, those who have great wealth are the donors which make such projects viable in the first place, and those who have had great wealth still mostly started from a "forward" position. The "force" to accomplish large vectors of change require a high potential, and static redistribution will ground out that ability to make swift change.
But this is merely the justification for pooled wealth. It says nothing, by itself, to justify inheritance in our current system.
Instead, that justification comes down to a prerequisite for the pooling of wealth: **financial literacy**.
My own grandfather had a saying that I have felt in my own life, often sharply: that was "learning money". Simply put, to attain financial literacy requires exposure to financial opportunity... To achieve financial literacy one must have enough money already that the initial losses, while painful, can educate the holder and still allow further opportunities to get it right. Or in other words, you will always be bad at something before you are good at it.
Further, there is the issue of informational legacy: rich *parents* have already made or at the very least been warned of the mistakes that a new learner may make, and can in many cases direct those they have educational control over (ie, their children) away from those mistakes; they can get the learning without spending the money.
This forms the ultimate crux of the problem: doing great things requires money, making money requires having money, having money requires financial literacy, and financial literacy requires either *wasting lots of money/resources* or *access to an educator of financial literacy*.
Now, I'm open to discussing how these problems of financial literacy may be solved *without* resorting to the natural evil of unequal birth opportunity. I don't think the problem exists without solutions, but I don't think either that we can, without such solutions in hand, resort to irresponsibly eating the rich and destroying our access to megaprojects.
Comment by bluePizelStudio at 22/01/2020 at 16:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So there’s two critical points this all hinges on:
A: that the inheritor ultimately has the same birthright to the wealth as the non-inheritor
B: that unequal birth opportunity is evil or immoral.
All of my sentiments on the issue also hinge around these two axioms, so I’d love to hear your opinion on two related questions/thoughts.
A quick aside, one of the caveats for me, that informs my opinion, is practical, real-world application. This discussion deals with wealth and legislature so is intended to be of a somewhat practical nature. The article itself argues for reasons why actual legislature should be changed.
The questions/thoughts:
A: If the inheritor and the non-inheritor have equal right to the wealth, then how do we actually distribute the wealth to everyone? Taxation is a run by a government, but if the argument is that all people have equal claim to this wealth, then it should be shared globally. What just arguments can be made to delineate who should benefit? Those in the same city? The same state? The same country?
Anything less than global dispersion of wealth seems to not address the issue. If everyone in the USA benefits from these taxation laws, then they all have increased their natural birthright to opportunity over those from other countries.
In practice, it seems to be extremely difficult to apply the logic in your argument, as sound as it may be. Furthermore, the dispersal requires government assistance to achieve, and governments are routinely corrupt and otherwise ineffective. Reliance on them is not ideal (this is obviously a personal opinion of course).
B. I can stand by the notion that unequal birth opportunity is not a good thing. However, in practice, I can’t see how anyone could argue that parents don’t have a right to provide for their children to the best of their ability.
Even if we take wealth out of the equation, in practice, there will never be equal birth opportunity. A child born to a multilingual math professor will end up with more opportunity than a child born to a crack head. There’s simply no practical way around unequal birth opportunity.
So that said, since unequal birth opportunity is unavoidable, and since (in my opinion) it is completely just to allow parents to do their best to provide for their children, then the right to BEQUEATH is at least just and moral. While the “inheritor” may not have a right to wealth, the bequeather seems to have a strong case for their right to provide wealth and opportunity for their child or whomever else.
Would love to hear your thoughts on these sentimates!
Oh and ps. I do realize that my first argument, not dispersing the wealth to just the nation but dispersing it globally, is reliant on the second axiom (equal birthright) which I then also attack. But I feel the two questions/thoughts I shared stand strong enough on their own to warrant some discussion that could be interesting and illuminating! I also didn’t touch a lot of your post regarding the megaprojects - I feel like my questions kind of stand aside from that separate issue. Interesting thoughts none the less though.