[ExI] Inheritance

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Sat Sep 9 15:27:04 UTC 2017


So I might be in favor of some free market method of redistributing wealth
above and beyond whatever would be adequate to comfortably support ones
heirs. Although I am loathe to let government do it.

Stuart LaForge

Since you don't seem to have an idea of who should do it, why not gov.
taxes?  Otherwise how would you enforce it?

My son in law is fairly rich, but he told his kids that he would support
them through college and that's all.  He thinks they need to go out there
and do what he did - earn a lot of money.

Inasmuch as gov. protects us from the worst disasters, such as starving
(but not from being homeless if you are a vet), why feel a need to support
your kids?  I would not fault someone who was intent on spending it all and
leaving kids nothing.  Why reduce their incentive to work and earn?

If you want to leave them something, put it in their names before you die.

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:

> In response to BillW, Dave Sill wrote:
>
> >> On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > How do you that? Confiscate it and redistribute it? Who decides who
> gets
> >> some? And why stop with the money? What about real estate, businesses,
> etc?
> >> Shouldn't they also go to more deserving people than heirs?
> >
> >> yes
> >
> >Yes to all six questions or just the last one? I'm trying to understand
> >what you're advocating but a one word answer doesn't help. At any rate,
> >what you're suggesting is not in any way libertarian, which I thought you
> >claimed to be.
>
> Actually, a libertarian argument could be made for inheritance tax or
> other forms, preferably free market, of redistribution of the wealth of
> the deceased.
>
> First off, inheritance is a form of economic rent which is a technical
> term for unearned wealth gained in the absense of production value, risk,
> or opportunity cost. All forms of economic rent are market inefficiencies
> and are considered to be factors in the unprecedented inequality we see
> today.
>
> Second, the USian founding fathers thought that inheritance was part of
> the trappings of European aristocracy. They abolished the English laws of
> primogeniture in the colonies because they felt it wrong for the dead to
> enforce their will upon the living in perpetuity and they were worried it
> would give rise to an American nobility.
>
> Ur economist Adam Smith had this to say on the subject:
>
> "A power to dispose of estates forever is manifestly absurd. The earth and
> the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can
> have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is
> quite unnatural. There is no point more difficult to account for than the
> right we conceive men to have to dispose of their goods after death."-
> Adam Smith
>
> https://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/10/estate_tax_and_founding_
> fathers
>
> As someone with libertarian leanings myself, I feel that inheritance
> brings into conflict my values of freedom and meritocracy. Whereas a part
> of me wants the ability to distribute my estate as I see fit, another part
> of me realizes that I will have no way of knowing whether I would approve
> of how that wealth was used by my heirs. Were I to know, I might want to
> change my mind.
>
> So I might be in favor of some free market method of redistributing wealth
> above and beyond whatever would be adequate to comfortably support ones
> heirs. Although I am loathe to let government do it.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
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