inheritance taxes are just mafia theft, no matter how you rationalize it
Well, everyone is member of this mafia. The problem is that lowest on the totem pole are not served by it.
Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
131–140 of 236 posts
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#132Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a reason why countries, like Sweden, have scrapped the inheritance tax - it doesn't work like that anymore. The benefits of wealth are exercised long before the inheritance can be applied. Your first home down payment, your education, your wealth generation while being on support by your parents, etc. - will push you off the ground faster, than any inheritance in a world where people easily live to 80-90. Mos…
I'm pretty sure we scrapped it because the conservatives got into power.
> Leif Pagrotsky, som då var näringsminister, har i efterhand avslöjat att avskaffandet av arvsskatten var en eftergift från Regeringen Persson till Svenskt Näringsliv
Well, not quite.
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#134Wealth inequality is not an intrinsic bad, and it's not even worth striving to reduce. The only thing that matters is the average (pick your average) standard of living. There's no point paying a fortune to have all the people who created the most value leave your country just so you can reduce a pointless metric, especially when all it does is get the state more money to spend on itself rather than reduce your costs…
Where do you think the money that is accrued by the most wealthy will be spent/invested/parked? What will its effects be on the broader economy? Assuming that the money is all used for altruistic purpose, I could agree with your point. But we know that this money is often used for not so altruistic purposes like investing in PE which asset strip the productive parts of economy or use the money to influence politics a…
>>Where do you think the money that is accrued by the most wealthy will be spent/invested/parked?
In most advanced economies today, that's equity. The ordinary person thinks of wealth as money lying around in the bank, which the rich person refuses to spend on anything useful. And instead either hoards, or spends on luxury things which cause resentment to the remainder.
The real question is for most people today its easier than ever to invest and then give it to their children. Why aren't people doing it?
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the average house price in London was £70k. Now it's >£700k. It doesn't have to be this way. It shouldn't be this way (for a healthy society) 10x in 35 years is compounded rate of return of under 7%, which is not far off the average mortgage rate over that period of time. Add in some maintenance and that might even represent a loss in real terms over that period of time.
Houses shouldn't be investments. Wages aren't 10x in that same period. All the increasing house price has done is transfer wealth from the younger generation to the older generation.
>>Houses shouldn't be investments.
People keep saying things without understanding what that means. Only reason why anyone even wants a home is because its profitable to them on the longer run. Else renting works.
Either way the demand for home ownership will be way less if you simply tell people they will make big losses on that purchase.
That said, now imagine how housing works in a world where no one wants to buy a home, but everyone wants to rent one. That is you want to rent a resource which no one is building at the first place.
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capital gains should be taxed like income. Fuel for private jets should be taxed like fuel for a car. The corporations that generated large quantities of wealth for their owners should pay decent wages for their employees. There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
> Capital gains should be taxed like income. Arguably capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate than income. But that's not going to happen, because your home's change in value is capital gains.
Homes already have giant flat exemptions for gains when sold.
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#1371) set a generous threshold over which your inheritance gets taxed, inflation adjusted (e.g, 2M not including the principal residence) 2) tax 100% above it. (should only concern a fraction of a fraction of cases) 3) put all this tax's proceeds in a sovereign wealth fund 4) at 21, a citizen gets access to her redistributed generational wealth 5) profit
Why make it on inheritance then? Tax wealth 100% above 2M. I do think this would doom progress but would be a fun exercise.
This is, quite literally, the silliest thing I may have ever read.
Cool, cool. Work for 30 years, save up and have say $3M to retire on, based on stock market at an all-time high. You're not a robber baron or investment banker, just someone who worked a long time and saved and invested. Govt takes $1M away from you, you have $2M now. Market drops 25%. Now you have $1.5M.
Congrats, your "plan" resulted in someone like that having HALF of everything they saved up just gone.
Yeah, yeah, I know, "if you have $1.5M you don't NEED any more money." Sounds like something that only someone with something less than $1.5M would say.
You don't "need" your iPhone, or your flat screen, or whatever. The government should not be in the business of determining what you "need" and taking the rest.
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Social democracy is Socialism[1]. European social democracies are among the top of the wealthiest countries in the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
I was unlucky to see and live in socialism. European democracies are not socialism by a mile. They are capitalist countries with some socialist elements. Yes, it makes sense.
Social democracy is a Socialist philosophy and has been ever since the spring revolutions of 1848.
You seem to confuse capitalism with market economy. Germany's social market economy was conceived as an alternative to capitalism; a market economy with strong focus on unions and social fairness/justice. In other European countries is very similar.
Socialism core principles have always been égalite, solidarity and democracy. It's pretty silly to think that a highly hierarchical, unjust and undemocratic system has anything to do with Socialism.
Hint; it doesn't. It might say so on the marketing material ("Socialist Republic!") but that's just that - marketing to fool the numbnuts.
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#139Wealth inequality is not an intrinsic bad, and it's not even worth striving to reduce. The only thing that matters is the average (pick your average) standard of living. There's no point paying a fortune to have all the people who created the most value leave your country just so you can reduce a pointless metric, especially when all it does is get the state more money to spend on itself rather than reduce your costs…
Extreme wealth inequality means extreme power inequality.
Do you really think a world with extreme power inequality is anything good?
Re: Over $70T of inherited wealth over next decade will widen inequality, economists
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
That observation is correct, but I'd challenge the implication that "therefore inheritance must be allowed to continue in its current form". Why are houses so expensive? Alongside challenges and inefficiences related to permits and building (as plenty discussed elsewhere) housing is also used as an investment asset by people with money to invest. This ranges from individuals buying an apartment to rent out, to large…
> Until this mechanism is recognised as the cause of asset appreciation What do you mean "until"? It's the core of many of European "dreams". Take UK for example, where there's a concept called "property ladder". This property ladder is the promise of ever increasing property values, to build wealth(it's a pyramid scheme). This "always appreciating" promise is not just subtextual, it's literally the core of the metho…
> What do you mean "until"? It's the core of many of European "dreams".
Sorry if I was unclear; I'm not referring to the "housing ladder" here, but rather that the accumulation of wealth (accelerated in recent years) by the already-rich has driven investment patterns that have in turn driven the appreciation of many asset classes that sit behind the current "cost of living crisis".
If one accepts this premise, then an obvious solution would be wealth taxation, of which inheritance tax is one form. But very few people in the politican/economics sphere are seriously talking about wealth taxation. (There are some, e.g. Gary Stevenson, and Zack Polanski is gently flirting with it as a policy.)