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

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

#141

Post by TulliusCicero »

jondubois wrote: post #129
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…

I'm a strong believer of the influence of genes on human behavior but I don't think that it has much to do with the ability to make money. The ability to make money has more to do with dumb luck and confidence than any kind of value-creating intelligence. The ability to keep money once you already have it might have a stronger genetic component however but it has nothing to do with value-creation.

There's a fairly strong correlation between IQ and income. Yes, IQ is not the exact same thing as intelligence, but it's the best measure we have available.

Also you're conflating "value-creation" with "make money" in your comment which muddles the issue. Making more money is often associated with greater value creation, but it's not strictly necessary.

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

#142

Post by golergka »

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…

> wealth became much more fairly distributed > clear trend of concentration of wealth

These two facts only contradict one another if you have an implicit belief that "fair" is "equal".

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

#143

Post by arkh »

ramblerman wrote: post #130
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…

There is a third (equally extreme) but much simpler way. Keep everything as is, but don't allow inheritance, or cap it at some number.

You still benefit from your parent's network, you learn a lot more at a young age at home, you profit from their money while being raised. That's a huge difference between people from poor areas and those from even middle-class families.

And that's something advantaged people don't like to think about when they use the meritocratic word: most of them benefited from huge advantages by being born in the right family. Or even just by being born in the right country.

Nowadays you benefit from your inheritance when you are established and don't really need it anymore. What really helped you was the 100k-1 million 0% interest loan with no problem if you don't pay it back you got during your 20s from your parents. Or just knowing you could be attending a good college and knowing the most important you have to get out of there is the right network of people.

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/september/toddler-langua... for an example of what having the right parents can help a long time before inheriting their property.

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

#144

Post by carlob »

rorykoehler wrote: post #139
carlob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syst…

The main problem is that right now we have absolutely no idea of where the wealth is. One of the most important consequences of the universal income tax was the production of a huge amount of data. There is no equivalent for wealth, even things like Forbes lists are mostly guesswork and handwaving.

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

#145

Post by vidarh »

golergka wrote: post #142
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…

> wealth became much more fairly distributed > clear trend of concentration of wealth These two facts only contradict one another if you have an implicit belief that "fair" is "equal".

Yes, that was the point the comment was making - that going back further shows that the common assumption of a more fair distribution is wrong.

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

#146

Post by adamlett »

rorykoehler wrote: post #139
carlob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syst…

The real issue i have with tax isn't how much i pay but how it is used.

Pardon my french, but that's such bullshit. Everyone who doesn't like to pay taxes has a noble excuse like yours. Sometimes they oppose to taxes being used to fund the arts, even though it's such a minuscule slice of the total pie as to be barely visible. Other times it's something else that they feel is frivolous or opposed to by some principle or other. The thing is however, that the nature of public spending is such that there is always something which we as private citizens would prefer not to pay for, if given the choice.

People with a libertarian bend tend to think of tax money being spent inefficiently as simply being wasted. But money spent by the government doesn't just disappear after it has been spent. It ends back in the pockets of the citizens! In the worst case scenario, it is thus simply being redistributed. In the best case scenario, it buys society something valuable (universal healthcare, say, or public education) along the way.

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

#147

Post by dd36 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #141
jondubois wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a strong believer of the influence of genes on human behavior but I don't think that it has much to do with the ability to make money. The ability to make money has more to do with dumb luck and confidence than any kind of value-creating intelligence. The ability to keep money once you already have it might have a stronger genetic component however but it has nothing to do with value-creation.

There's a fairly strong correlation between IQ and income. Yes, IQ is not the exact same thing as intelligence, but it's the best measure we have available. Also you're conflating "value-creation" with "make money" in your comment which muddles the issue. Making more money is often associated with greater value creation, but it's not strictly necessary.

Yes, a lot of money can be made from defrauding or destroying.

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

#148

Post by rorykoehler »

adamlett wrote: post #146
rorykoehler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syst…

The real issue i have with tax isn't how much i pay but how it is used. Pardon my french, but that's such bullshit. Everyone who doesn't like to pay taxes has a noble excuse like yours. Sometimes they oppose to taxes being used to fund the arts, even though it's such a minuscule slice of the total pie as to be barely visible. Other times it's something else that they feel is frivolous or opposed to by some principle…

Sorry it's not bullshit. Governments in Europe are especially renowned for the any work is better than none approach and therefore even make up fake jobs to keep their unemployed subjects busy. Protestant work ethic withdrawal is evident and drawn out. Having experienced living in numerous countries i can safely say that taxes are often (not always) poorly spent in Europe. The bureaucracy is over bearing and many jobs exist purely for the sake of existing when they could and are done much better by computers in other countries. Im actually quite left leaning which is why when i care when i see public sector inefficiencies on the scale that they exist in Europe. My ideals start to become threatened when the execution is so purposefully ham fisted. We could be using that money and more importantly time to do amazing things that brings all of humanity forward rather than forcing people to do pointless jobs that they hate in any case.

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

#149

Post by hjnilsson »

jopsen wrote: post #59
isostatic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you tax income? That's a disincentive to be productive, that's not good - we want people to be productive. Taxing wealth is basically paying a rent to the society that allows that wealth to exist. Your land in manhattan is only worth $10m because society hasn't gone all Syrian. Your copyright holding over your film is only worth anything because we don't let people freely copy it. When the wealth is owned by t…

Interesting idea.. so instead of taxing income, you would tax wealth carried from one year to another... That would massively discourage saving. I'm not sure that's great in the long run. In the short run I'll probably lead to massive growth as every goes to burn their dollars on something :) (Arguably it might be a low tax, might even limited to people with a lot of wealth)

Such a tax would have a lower bound on wealth (that is how it works in all countries with wealth tax). Only wealth above a set limit (say 1 million dollars) would be taxed. It would not affect people's incentive to save. In fact, if it makes wealthy people spend more of their money, that could conceivably be a net positive on the economy as well (less stagnant money).

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

#150

Post by dd36 »

julian_1 wrote: post #16
crdoconnor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive part of people's motivation to work is to provide for their children. >That an increasing portion of wealth is inherited rather than build in an individual's working life-time is indicative that the system is function as intended. No, it just signals that the tax system treats unearned income and wealth more favourably than earned income. Political choices. How you feel about that depends upon how you feel…

> the tax system treats unearned income and wealth more favourably than earned income. The income was taxed when it was earned. What reason is there to tax it twice? > how you feel about in increase in unearned income flowing to the wealthy I guess. Or about how you feel about the government's use of it's citizen's resources. Why should wealth earned by the breadwinner of the family, not remain with the family? It's…

You don’t. You tax the new income that old income generates. Frankly, all income should be taxed the same and there shouldn’t be deductions.
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