More than half of all private wealth has been inherited in most of Europe • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by topmonk » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 12:48 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #202

topmonk wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we concentrate most of our effort on those whos' parents succeeded? If the parents had the right mindset and the right genes to succeed, they would in all likelihood pass those onto their children. This mirrors the natural world to a great degree, and to me would seem to allow for a lot more beneficial outcomes then some arbitrary guideline of fairness. What is better, to give $100K in wealth to everyon…

The problem with this is that as long as there are so many confounding factors, there is no reason to assume that the success of someones parents was "their own" as opposed to a result of one or more of the confounding factors such as a better network, and access to better education. If you are going to go that route a better measure would be how much upwards mobility someones parents have demonstrated proportional t…

That would be true if we were trying to find the exact reasons for success.

If you are just trying to promote success, then it stands to reason to reward success of the parents, incase some of those confounding factors are hiding actual fitness. After all, if the null hypothesis is true, you aren't losing anything by promoting some people over others, if they are all equality capable, anyway.

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

#212

Post by topmonk » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 12:51 AM UTC

earthtolazlo wrote: post #176

topmonk wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we concentrate most of our effort on those whos' parents succeeded? If the parents had the right mindset and the right genes to succeed, they would in all likelihood pass those onto their children. This mirrors the natural world to a great degree, and to me would seem to allow for a lot more beneficial outcomes then some arbitrary guideline of fairness. What is better, to give $100K in wealth to everyon…

Social Darwinism was bullshit 100 years ago and it’s bullshit today.

I looked up this term in wikipedia, and I don't know what you are trying to label me as. It seems to be just a buzz word.

As quoted from "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics":

Part of the difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of natural selection and to 'survival of the fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist' could just as well be a defender of laissez-faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenist.

Can you explain further?

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

#213

Post by Can_Not » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 1:04 AM UTC

topmonk wrote: post #211

vidarh wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that as long as there are so many confounding factors, there is no reason to assume that the success of someones parents was "their own" as opposed to a result of one or more of the confounding factors such as a better network, and access to better education. If you are going to go that route a better measure would be how much upwards mobility someones parents have demonstrated proportional t…

That would be true if we were trying to find the exact reasons for success. If you are just trying to promote success, then it stands to reason to reward success of the parents, incase some of those confounding factors are hiding actual fitness. After all, if the null hypothesis is true, you aren't losing anything by promoting some people over others, if they are all equality capable, anyway.

If you're letting 1% of the population hoard 99% of the opportunity, you're losing metric tons of potential.

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

#214

Post by nicolashahn » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 1:42 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #209

learnstats2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. Determining someone's future on parental wealth means determining someone's future on a lack of parental wealth - and a vast majority of parents don't have meaningful wealth. So we're (society is at present) consigning a majority of children to a life of missed opportunity and missed potential. I don't see how that can be a good thing.

My point is that if you were a parent, you'd probably realize that for many parents, a large part of the reason they strive to earn is to be able to leave their children in the best possible position in life. It's not something we should be trying to "correct" by removing that ability from parents, and it's uncomfortable to have the government trying to get in between that relationship, beyond the normal inheritance…

I'm not a parent (also not the person you're directly responding to), but I think one day I might be. Right now we're encouraging the productive people to pass on their assets, but not the ability to create wealth - which would be better for society, and (totally my own subjective opinion) will lead to a better life for the child as well.

There's still the option of living a comfortable life being totally unproductive - but why let that option waste an unnecessary amount of our society's assets?

This would be an extremely strong move by the government, you're right, but I think most people would be behind it, especially since it would affect less than a percent of the population. We're not headed down that path currently, but I thought it was an idea worth sharing.

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

#215

Post by topmonk » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 1:59 AM UTC

Can_Not wrote: post #213

topmonk wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be true if we were trying to find the exact reasons for success. If you are just trying to promote success, then it stands to reason to reward success of the parents, incase some of those confounding factors are hiding actual fitness. After all, if the null hypothesis is true, you aren't losing anything by promoting some people over others, if they are all equality capable, anyway.

If you're letting 1% of the population hoard 99% of the opportunity, you're losing metric tons of potential.

It isn't. It's much more graduated than that.

If we don't vary the amount of support people get, then we won't be able to take advantage of situations where more support (or less) would result in greater success.

And given that everything is constantly changing, there is no way to find a perfect level of opportunity to give to people.

So, a system that provides a varying level of support spread out against the population will do better nearly all of the time than one that provides an equal amount to everyone.

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

#216

Post by 6t6t6t6 » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 3:41 AM UTC

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…

What about taxing more the inheritances and capital income and taxing less the work income?

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

#217

Post by rorykoehler » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 4:29 AM UTC

victormours wrote: post #190

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…

This might be a chicken and egg problem: we need takes to fund the work of automating away these things. Just saying "public service is not good enough, so i don't want to pay more money to make it better" seems like a dead end.

I disagree. There should always be an effort to do more with less. This should be ingrained into our dna in business and in government.

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

#218

Post by adamlett » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

ondo wrote: post #170

adamlett wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

a "noble excuse" like "I don't want the goverment to spend over a third of what it gets in taxes on a massive ponzi scheme"? I'm going to assume you are french, and invite you to come to Spain, where we have a flamboyant highspeed railroad service in which there's not a single line that covers costs (not even Madrid-Barcelona). And guess what, we keep throwing money to that thing. As for "money not disappearing", you…

[I] invite you to come to Spain, where we have a flamboyant highspeed railroad service in which there's not a single line that covers costs (not even Madrid-Barcelona). And guess what, we keep throwing money to that thing.

What if you let go of the notion that public transportation must be profitable? I don't know anything about the railroad service of which you speak, but I find it incredible if the cost of running it is more than the value it creates (although I concede that it's possible in principle). Do you know what else most societies keep throwing taxpayer money at? Roads. Yet you don't find very many people having a hard time accepting that the cost of building roads exceeds the value created by doing so.

As for "money not disappearing", you are falling for the "parable of the broken window".

I don't know what you mean by this.

Wikipedia has a much better explanation for it.

I'm sure they do.

Once you're done with that

I have this principle which is that if you can't or won't make the argument, I'm not going to go elsewhere and read someone else make it for you.

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

#219

Post by crdoconnor » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 8:40 AM UTC

jogjayr wrote: post #204

crdoconnor wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think that siphoning wealth through gambling deserves better tax treatment than creating it through working?

Certainly some investment can be classed as "gambling". But not all, maybe not even most. Starting, owning, and/or running a business is working. Only it's working with no guarantee of any reward. Again, we can argue about how high the tax rate should be on unearned income vs earned income (20% max is too low IMO). But $50k in unearned income is worth less (risk-adjusted) than $50k in earned income and should accordi…

>Starting, owning, and/or running a business is working. Only it's working with no guarantee of any reward.

Well, yes, that's why the rewards of starting a business are often completely tax free up until a pretty high level. I don't really have a problem with that, which should have been pretty obvious from my above post.

However, that is completely irrelevant to what I said above.

Sitting on property and collecting rent is clearly not working.

>Again, we can argue about how high the tax rate should be on unearned income vs earned income

I'm of the opinion that unearned income should be taxed at 100% and distributed equally throughout the population whereas earned income should be taxed at 0%. I have yet to meet a person who can cogently argue why handouts (e.g. land rents) shouldn't be distributed equally.

Note that starting a business that grows is clearly earned at least up until a certain point (usually the point where the founder lets the employees run most things).

>Shouldn't the variance of this success be recognized in the tax code as well?

You really seem very keen on having the tax code encourage gambling over working.

I'm not so sure that using the tax code to deliberately discourage working for a living is necessarily the best way to generate a productive economy.

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

#220

Post by vidarh » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 9:47 AM UTC

topmonk wrote: post #211

vidarh wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that as long as there are so many confounding factors, there is no reason to assume that the success of someones parents was "their own" as opposed to a result of one or more of the confounding factors such as a better network, and access to better education. If you are going to go that route a better measure would be how much upwards mobility someones parents have demonstrated proportional t…

That would be true if we were trying to find the exact reasons for success. If you are just trying to promote success, then it stands to reason to reward success of the parents, incase some of those confounding factors are hiding actual fitness. After all, if the null hypothesis is true, you aren't losing anything by promoting some people over others, if they are all equality capable, anyway.

Does it? We don't know that without actually testing. It's very much possible that providing less assistance but to more people will have a much wider impact. If the parents truly are responsible for their own success, there is for example good reason to hypothesize that they may be able to compensate for reduced support with their abilities.