Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 230 posts

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#131

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #85
bradfitz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess mom made the right decision coming here Where's here? Oh, from your Hacker News profile -> Twitter profile ( https://twitter.com/doreen_michele ) which says "Southwest Coastal Washington".

I'm sure you were just making polite conversation but it's maybe not so great to follow two pointer hops to someone's personal details. People have many reasons for being sensitive about these things. I've never thought about it before, but your comment made me realize that maybe the best thing is to feel free to mention what's in someone's HN profile but leave it at that. On the other hand, I broke that myself only…

[deleted]

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#132

Post by carlob »

arkh wrote: post #122
kiliantics wrote: post #27

Piketty showed in Capital that most modern work about the trends in economic inequality was flawed. We usually think of the industrial revolution and modern era as periods where power and wealth became much more fairly distributed. However, if you go far back enough into the records, as he did, you can see a clear trend of concentration of wealth even now in the current system. The trend was briefly disrupted by the…

There are two extreme ways to remove the inheritance problem. One would be to forfeit personal property: you can't give what you don't own. The other would be to remove the concept of family: when born you are placed in a communal system to be raised by professionals. People start with the same chances, the same level of social knowledge, network and vocabulary, you almost get to a pure meritocratic society (there ar…

Or as Piketty proposed tax wealth as well as income.

Right now some country implement some inheritance tax, but that's the only time when wealth is actually measured and taxed and there are so many loopholes (trust funds, donations, …) to make this incredibly ineffective especially on the richest.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#133

Post by wutbrodo »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #114
closeparen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A median-income household owning a median-priced house and making the standard 15% 401k contribution will clear "millionaire" by retirement age, easily.

And yet “Fifty-seven percent of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense”. We suck at saving as a country.

Cash and net worth are not the same thing.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#134

Post by raducu »

arkh wrote: post #122
kiliantics wrote: post #27

Piketty showed in Capital that most modern work about the trends in economic inequality was flawed. We usually think of the industrial revolution and modern era as periods where power and wealth became much more fairly distributed. However, if you go far back enough into the records, as he did, you can see a clear trend of concentration of wealth even now in the current system. The trend was briefly disrupted by the…

There are two extreme ways to remove the inheritance problem. One would be to forfeit personal property: you can't give what you don't own. The other would be to remove the concept of family: when born you are placed in a communal system to be raised by professionals. People start with the same chances, the same level of social knowledge, network and vocabulary, you almost get to a pure meritocratic society (there ar…

Not living with your family in you first ~7 years of life has disastrous effects on brain development and emotional health for the rest of your life.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#135

Post by RyanZAG »

capisce wrote: post #111
wycs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would all be true if we were all genetically identical. However psychometrics has proven and now cognitive genomics is confirming that valuable mental characteristics have very large genetic components. Intelligence is the capacity to achieve your goals. Intelligence is highly heritable. A goal of most people is to become wealthy. So people who acquire wealth tend to be much more intelligent than average, as wea…

> Wealth distribution would not fix this. But a certain amount of wealth distribution could improve the life quality of those born with less potential.

> improve the life quality of those born with less potential

While a noble goal, I don't believe this is a goal shared by the majority of the population. I think if you ran a poll between "improve the life quality of those born with less potential" and "improve the progress of humanity", the results would favor the later.

Is it better to bring fresh cold water to all, or hot and cold water to some? If it cost $100 to each person for either, I believe that those who possessed $100 would pay for hot water for themselves.

There's an argument for "do both", but that's not always realistic. Those without can force the issue with democracy, but if they force the issue too far, bad things are known to happen from history. I'd be wary of forcing it too far, but your opinion is your own.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#136

Post by smsm42 »

closeparen wrote: post #116
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet “Fifty-seven percent of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense”. We suck at saving as a country.

Most of the value contributing to millionaire net worth is going to be in 401ks and home equity, neither of which you could reasonably access to pay a $500 expense. It would be pretty weird to have <$500 in checking at the same time as 5-6 figures in retirement + home equity, but possible. It helps that 401k is a payroll deduction and there's really no bargaining with yourself on whether to pay the mortgage this mont…

You can access 401k under "financial hardship", after paying taxes and 10% penalty. Of course, it's rarely worth it for $500 - it'd be better to find a credit card with 0% APR or other credit option, if you have access to those. I imagine most people with 401k's do have access to credit. Am I wrong?

You can also loan against 401k (though there are limits, but if you have it for a while loaning $500 would not be a problem, though again fees could make it a bad deal). Advantage is that while you lose the growth for the time of the loan, you are paying interest to yourself, not somebody else.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#138

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #98
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The income by the inheritor was never earned. Hence it's perfectly logical to tax it.

Yes it was. It was earned by the person who made the money. Would you rather all the wealthy people in the world just blow all their money on yachts or something? Because that is the alternative. Why bother saving money if it is all just going to be confiscated when you die. Instead you should just blow it all on ridiculous things that help nobody but yourself in the immediate time frame.

[deleted]

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#139

Post by rorykoehler »

carlob wrote: post #132
arkh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two extreme ways to remove the inheritance problem. One would be to forfeit personal property: you can't give what you don't own. The other would be to remove the concept of family: when born you are placed in a communal system to be raised by professionals. People start with the same chances, the same level of social knowledge, network and vocabulary, you almost get to a pure meritocratic society (there ar…

Or as Piketty proposed tax wealth as well as income. Right now some country implement some inheritance tax, but that's the only time when wealth is actually measured and taxed and there are so many loopholes (trust funds, donations, …) to make this incredibly ineffective especially on the richest.

All these proposals about taxing more make me feel uneasy. The real issue i have with tax isn't how much i pay but how it is used. Before i need to pay even more tax i would like to see a concerted effort to automate civil service jobs out of existence (needing to queue at 5am in the morning to get anything done in Berlin is an inexcusable joke in 21st century) and two we need to destroy the unemployment welfare system and implement a basic income. If those two things don't happen as a minimum then i don't think anyone should pay another cent because Europeans are already getting shit value for money as it is.

Re: More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe

#140

Post by crdoconnor »

julian_1 wrote: post #88
twblalock wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course those arguments apply to governments as well, since they don't derive their law-making authority by claim to divinity - at least in modern times. You could use that statement to argue about anything a government does. Why does the inheritance tax need a special justification?

Why do laws that appropriate private citizens wealth need to be justified? Well, the alternative is wonderful stuff like civil forfeiture law. Whereby a policeman without evidence or proof of criminal wrongdoing can take that $2000 in your glovebox in the name of a defacto beneficiary (the state), because on a balance of probabilities he thinks he has a better claim than you do.

>Why do laws that appropriate private citizens wealth need to be justified?

What moral authority does a private citizen have to own land in Manhattan created 3 billion years ago and made valuable by the infrastructure he didn't build and community he charges rent to?

Post reply on HN