This leads to what we have today: insane levels of wealth inequality.
Everyone that inherits fortunes from their parents get to live life on easy mode while every one else is poorer, with less assets and barring winning a lottery ticket, no way to ever catch up. Wealth creates a feedback loop that if gone unchecked will hoard all assets from everyone else.
We can't have both meritocracy and inheritance as they are mutually exclusive. If we want to keep telling people there's any modicum of truth to meritocracy, we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit. The particulars of it can be discussed with caps based on amounts, for example, but that's not the point.
There's a reason that most wealthy people from the past are still wealthy today and I can guarantee you it's not through their own merit.
Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.
> There should be no billionaires.
These moral judgements aren't great ways to make economic decisions. A billionaire can just be someone who owns a lot of shares in a company that's currently valuable. A company's value (in this sense) is just the total number of shares multiplied by the last share sale price.
It doesn't mean they have a billion dollars in cash. The billions don't even exist. They're just a value based on the last transaction value of the company's share dealing.
It's not a moral judgement. Morals have nothing to do with how power works. Society does not benefit from small groups owning enormous amounts of power.
Whether they're kings from "divine right", corrupt nepo babies or even legitimate geniuses. Nobody should have that much power.
There's a big difference between money and power, though. A TSA agent can affect your life in a big way without the use of any money. That's power[0].
There's a big difference between money: voluntarily trading value for services and goods, some of which might negatively affect you, and power: trading nothing for direct control of aspects of your life.
[0] Not inappropriate power, or not in theory
That they can borrow money from the banks as if they do exist says you're wrong.
Well yes, companies do exist. How would you handle that? Nationalize all large businesses? That... rarely worked out historically.
> That they can borrow money from the banks as if they do exist says you're wrong.
I can borrow money for a house even though I don't have money to buy a house.
> These moral judgements aren't great ways to make economic decisions.
In my experience, a lot of people who make these kinds of extreme claims (no billionaires, no inheritance, etc.) do not seek plausible economic solutions, they only want the moral high ground.
In my experience, people that simply attack other people instead of contributing to the discussion are the ones that want the "moral high ground".
That statement is in no way moral. Not sure why GP assumes that. It's simply not beneficial to society for small groups to accumulate disproportionate amounts of power.
But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.
> It's simply not beneficial to society for small groups to accumulate disproportionate amounts of power.
Power and money aren't the same thing. Someone who can throw you in jail or stop you getting on a flight can be on a very low wage indeed.
> But as always, we have some "future billionaires" rushing to defend them.
This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.
> Power and money aren't the same thing.
Kind of are in a capitalist society. Sure you need extra steps but it's still power. No need to go far... Elon is living proof of that. Other billionaires do the same but they don't need all the attention.
You're arguing you don't necessarily need money to have power but if you have money you absolutely do have power, which is my point.
> This would be considered one of those attacks you just mentioned.
I know... I couldn't help myself to hit back at a useless comment.
A capitalist democratic society is about the only type I know of that tries to separate money and power.
Normally the monarch or the Socialist dictator or the lord of the land controls the money and the power.
IDK if I agree with you, since in theory modern socialism tries to spread power, although it never quite worked like that in history. Maybe that's an utopia.
> A capitalist democratic society is about the only type I know of that tries to separate money and power.
But when I read this I can't help but think the same utopia is under capitalism.
In theory there's a separation. In reality billionaires can purchase politicians, media, etc. and get power through those means. I have never seen an example of this not happening.
If there were any effective ways of stopping money from meddling with power I'd agree with you but reality always smacks theories in the face. You say it tries to separate them but then you have lobbying (or the non-legal version of it) in every government as an example. It's an utopia just the same.
> Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.
But what is wealth? And when should you tax it?
Let's say I take a piece of duct tape and a banana and ducttape the banana to a wall.... how much tax should I pay for that? I mean... how much could a banana cost?
If i sell that "art", for example for $6.2M (yes, it sold for that much), then sure, i did my "work", earned $6.2M, and in the current system i'm taxed for my "work" (well.. income for my work).
So, by your logic, when should I get taxed? And for what value? The net worth of that banana on the wall is $1, so should I be taxed on that value? But if someone wants to pay $6.2M for that, should my tax change, even before it's bought? Do I get my taxes back if he changes his mind?
What if instead I start a small company named Sava (a river nearby) that sells books. Do I get taxed now, when the value of the company is $10k in books in the warehouse? What if someone believes in my company so much, he wats to buy 1 millionth of my company for $1000, should I be taxed on the theoretic value of my company (1B now)? Or should I be taxed only when I actually sell that stock and earn the money?
Yes, life is not fair, kids of rich parents start with a lot of money. My parents were not rich, but believed in the future of computing and bought me (a kid back then) a computer in the time when you had to take out a loan to get one. My friends parents bought him a motorcycle. I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Instead of focusing on taking away stuff where the taxes were already paid, lets rather focus on people like bezos paying the same amount of taxes as other businesses do, like mom and pop book stores (i'm talking percentages, not net values), and to stop the abuse of every goddamn tax loophole they abuse now.
You're basically describing one way the rich dodge wealth taxes and saying we can't do it because it's hard to figure the value of some things out.
I don't deny it's very tricky and people will absolutely do their best to dodge as much as possible, but that doesn't invalidate the purpose they serve. You can't claim those hundreds of properties you have are worth $1.
I'm by no means an expert but my idea would be to tax rich people yearly after a cap. We don't want to tax workers but the whole swath of parasites that simply extract from society.
Your company example is odd. Can you lend based on your theoretical valuation of $1B? Then perhaps we tax if you do. I don't know all the answers off the top of my head and neither should I.
That doesn't mean we let people accumulate wealth infinitely. It's a problem and there's no way to ignore it. The more wealth is accumulated, the more they accumulate and for a lot of assets it is literally a zero sum game. If they own everything, we own nothing.
Posing edge cases and possible dodge scenarios like you did is exactly what a politician should be spending their time on when proposing these.
> I'm an above-average paid 'developer' now and he works minimum wage in a factory. So, should i lose something or have to pay something back, because my parents made better decisions than his?
Not more than what's fair. Unless you're secretly a multi-millionaire, this wouldn't ever affect you. I don't understand people's fears of taxation on the super rich when they aren't even close to that.
These taxes are not for working people. If you don't live off a trust fund from daddy you probably don't have to worry. Well, if we're being honest, this will never happen because they own the politicians too... but a man can dream.
Tax consumption, not work or wealth.
So - this is quite a good idea, but worked example: what if I work for a UK/US business, but live in a low cost of living country? Is that just fine, because I'm still consuming resources where I'm working? Or is it a bit of a loophole (can't tell)?
> Tax wealth,
Perhaps. However an extremely high inheritance tax is an irrational way to do that. It would incentivize everyone to spend all their money/wealth before they die e.g. directly or just by selling all their property and buying an annuity.
A massive increase in consumption wouldn't necessarily be the best outcome. Though I do see some benefits.
> we have to stop all this inheritance bullshit.
That would only work if you ban parents from giving any gifts or financial support to their children. Which is a very slippery slope...
> Tax wealth, not work. There should be no billionaires.
NB. This does not mean that Inheritance should be a taxable event! There would be less need to have inheritance tax if we had a consistent wealth tax.
It remains obvious to me that inheritance drives social inequality, and similarly it is obvious that parents are going to resent not giving their children as much help as they can.
Yeah, if we had very effective wealth taxes, I could see it being less relevant. Right now, it kind of works as a very rare wealth tax and is probably dodged quite a lot by transferring ownership beforehand. I'm no expert since but I'm sure it's full of loopholes.
But it's one of the very few wealth taxes we actually have today...
> I'm sure it's full of loopholes.
Yeah, there are a few very well defined loopholes - gifting early, pension wrappers, some trusts, agricultural land, non-dom etc etc - some are being closed. In general the richer you are the more likely you are to be able to minimise and avoid the tax.