71–80 of 230 posts
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> 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".
bradfitz: eighteen years later and still too personal.
What's interesting about this is that it barely scratches the surface. Assets and money are just some of the things that people inherit from their parents. Many people inherit their entire careers from their parents through social connections - These people would probably be classified as 'self made' which makes the statistics seem more benign than they actually are. I bet if you counted out all those people who were…
Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on guesses, we have measures of economic mobility. In particular, how likely is it that someone born into a particular quintile moves to a higher (or lower) quintile? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th... Answer: it’s not great and getting worse, but not as dire as you portray.
> If a parent's income had no effect on a child's opportunity for future upward mobility, approximately 20% of poor children who started in the bottom quintile (in the bottom 20% of the US range of incomes) would remain there as poor adults. At the other end of income spectrum, if children were born into wealthy families in the top 20%, only 20% would stay in that top income category if their mobility opportunities were equal to every other child's in the country.
> But long-term income statistics show this isn't happening. Mobility opportunities are different for poor and wealthy children in the US. Parental incomes and parental choices of home locations while raising children appear to be major factors in that difference. According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[19] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom.[19] 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle. These findings have led researchers to conclude that "opportunity structures create and determine future generations' chances for success. Hence, our lot in life is at least partially determined by where we grow up, and this is partially determined by where our parents grew up, and so on."[20]
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Wealth naturally dissipates through the generations. What has changed the most is the birth rate of the wealthy. If they went back to having a dozen children apiece, wealth would dissipate at least an order of magnitude per generation.
Depends on laws and customs. Primogeniture concentrates inherited wealth in firstborn (usually male) offspring. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture
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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…
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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…
Let’s see how richer the trump family will become after the presidency...
The flawed thinking that wealth is a pie of fixed size wherein gain by one is necessarily another’s loss is known as mercantilism and was long ago discredited as bunk economics.
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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)
Saving money is already discouraged by inflation. A wealth tax would be functionally equivalent to a fixed inflation rate, just the numerical values would be different. Since the numbers would be going down instead of the increasing money supply devaluing savings, I guess people wouldn't like it, because losing wealth would actually feel like losing wealth.
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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)
Saving money is already discouraged by inflation. A wealth tax would be functionally equivalent to a fixed inflation rate, just the numerical values would be different. Since the numbers would be going down instead of the increasing money supply devaluing savings, I guess people wouldn't like it, because losing wealth would actually feel like losing wealth.
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Saving money is already discouraged by inflation. A wealth tax would be functionally equivalent to a fixed inflation rate, just the numerical values would be different. Since the numbers would be going down instead of the increasing money supply devaluing savings, I guess people wouldn't like it, because losing wealth would actually feel like losing wealth.
Not really. Inflation reduces the value of money, but not assets. A wealth tax would tax assets as well.
Also I'm not sure discouraging invests is a good side effect..
But it's an interesting thought nonetheless.
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> 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".
bradfitz: eighteen years later and still too personal.