Yes there was a lot of shuffling around in the past century. 2 world wars, huge tax on the wealthy in the US, and huge growth have enabled that.
However I’m not sure the past is a good indicator for the future in this case ^^
Now the taxes for the wealthy are much lower, and they tend to get lower still. So yes currently it’s not bad at all, but I do not see it go toward more equality.
For example If I look around my friends, I can see some people not having to work because they inherited a few rental flats. And I can see people able to buy huge flats at 30 using money from their parents. For those who have nothing, it’s much more difficult. Of course if you have a money moustache and accept to move far from your friends and family most people can end up well, but is it equality?
If you are interested by the question wealth (in)equality and how it can emerge and stay in place, there’s a really good book which english translation came out in march : “Capital and Ideology” by Thomas Piketty.
It’s a looooong read, it has some angle of the subject it is treating (basically, the economy of capital since the end of medieval time) but is very interesting.
Since time is what almost everyone has more than enough right now, why not plunge into this book ?
Please, not Piketty… he is regarded as the go-to economist for progressivist capitalism-haters and is widely criticized by the members of the Austrian School of Economics.
Yes, but he also has a chair at french School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris and London school of economics. And Pau Krugman, 2008 nobel prize of economic laureate, has praised his first book as one of the most influential economic book of the decade…
Of course his work has an ideological angle, and of course both his partisan and enemys will have strong opinions on the subject. But as long as inequality is the topic, you’ll have to concede that it’s work has some weight.
Regarding the review you linked, it is about his first book, published more than a decade ago. The second one has taken into account most of the critics of the first (methodological and west centered analysis).
What is interesting in this book is not the last chapters, the one where he gives his opinions on how to adress the inequality issue, though it is the one evyrone is raving about (both pro and anti-capitalist).
The biggest part of the book is a good sourced history lesson about inequality, both income and networth inequality, and how systems tend to justify those with political idea.
And that is the point ! At a time where stock exchange are going up with millions of people left unenmployed and told that “it is the only way”, recognizing that it is just “the only way we want to conceive” is important.
Just for the historical part, I strongly recommend the reading, you can have your own conclusions after that. Isn’t that what first principle reasonning is all about ?
Agree that it doesn’t make sense to be too anti-Piketty. A lot of economists have at least a somewhat favourable view on him, even when they disagree with most of his claims.
That’s why we should stop complaining about others not contributing enough and start contributing ourselves more! If everybody put actions before bitching all these problems would be already solved. But it’s easier to spend all your money on bullshit, sit on the couch, do nothing and complain that richer than me are not helping the poor. All that leftist redistributionist nonsense is such a disgusting hypocrisy.
The fact that all these redistributionists aren’t helping themselves is just a living proof that if they were billionaires, they would be much worse than Gates, Buffet and others in both business and philanthropy. It’s just pure pathetic envy - the rich should help, not me.
In essence it boils down to one rule - immoral men are generous with somebody’s else money, moral men are generous with their own.
Yes, luck and inheritance might play important role in wealth distribution (even though skill, hard work and entrepreneurship plays even greater role). So what? Is it immoral to be lucky, have wealthy family, be born in right place? How is this making redistribution just? It’s nobody fault that one is lucky, and other is not. And the lucky one owes nothing to nobody for being lucky. Luck is a grim fact of life. Trying to fix it by robbing anyone is unjust. You all guys are quite lucky. Is it fine then if I steal your money and transfer it to charities?
BTW. Speaking of that French socialist Piketty, here’s an excellent review of his book:
If you are born in a rich family you already have massive head start in life. If you add a gigantic inheritance on top of that it becomes unfair.
In my opinion it is utterly normal to tax and redistribute inheritance money, you just have to do it progressively. This is money that nobody has done anything to deserve other than being born. Shouldn’t people build their own path in life? Shouldn’t at least try to break apart multi-generational empires (e.g. the Johnson family)?
You were born rich by world standards. If you were honest and consistent about this, you’d redistribute most of your family money to Africa. It’s somehow always money of the richer than me that needs to be redistributed, never mine.
I moved a chunk of the Corona thread into a new thread under a fitting name
I guess people should build their own path in life, yes. But it’s human instinct to provide for our children. How would you feel if they took away the half of what you were going to leave to your kids, how would they feel? How many workarounds can you think of in just a couple of minutes?
I think instead of inheritance tax, a high wealth tax would do the trick. I find wealth tax also quite fair, compared to income tax. The country’s law and order system, its infrastructure, administration and defence all exist to protect your life and your capital. Therefore, what if there was a, let’s say 1% wealth tax, paid every year. This way, you would have to really make your capital work, even if you were rich, otherwise it would just slowly melt from the tax.
But of course, from the perspective of FIRE/Mustachians, it’s not in our interest to see high wealth tax
Besides, it’s true that life is unfair because luck exists, “undeserved” and “deserved” benefits are bundled together and they’re inseparable. It’s a grim fact of life. But this doesn’t give anybody license to rob billionaires, millionaires or thousanders. The rich didn’t do anything wrong by being lucky. It’s not their fault that others are less lucky and they owe nothing to nobody.
Trying to eliminate the luck from life would not only utterly fail (we had examples of this system) but, what’s worse, it would undermine the productive forces of society - work, thrift, entrepreneurship - everything that makes riches “deserved”. The vicious circle of envy leads only to misery and disappointment.
It’s not only about feelings, I wouldn’t try to FIRE if my son couldn’t inherit my money. I wouldn’t plan to save and invest for life if Switzerland wouldn’t let me leave the estate for next generation. It’s obvious that a lot of people would save and invest less if they couldn’t leave money to hiers. That means less capital would be created, and if you know basic economics, you know that less capital means less jobs and lower wages. Fighting with inheritance hinders the entire society by slowing economic growth.
@1000000CHF:
If I understand your points, you say that all humans are greedy and selfish, and that we should just accept it? (Please correct me if I misunderstood!)
Regarding the role of luck, if one’s child gets in the worst public school with the worst teacher, should he accept it just a bad luck and keep going? Because the moral thing is to accept bad luck?
I think my best argument regarding those points of view would be the following:
As someone selfish, I want my child to be raised in the best environment, and “unfortunately” this environment consists of many other people. Therefore the best thing I can do for my child is to leave him a world where at least the worse lucks are removed by the social net.
My cousin is a teacher in primary school, she told me many example of just having one or two “bad elements” in the class where this would prevent most of the class to have a good year.
Of course we can then think about private school (which are not immune to the same issues, and are far from mustachianism ^^) or home schooling (I do think about this one quite a lot ^^).
Regarding inheriting, for my (yet unborn) children, I want to limit it to education and a small help to enter adults world (which I consider as part of education ^^).
Can you tell me how giving money to any charitable society (or maybe to a company which I consider of much help to society) as opposed to my child hinders economic growth?
I don’t have the power or the desire of putting my parents on the street so I could sell all their assets just to “send the money to Africa”. The Bill and Melinda gates fondation sounds like a better investment for the world if you want to know what I would do if I had millions…
I am perfectly fine with the tax that will imposed by the state when I will inherit my parents wealth (if anything is left). I don’t count this money as mine and would be already be glad if anything is left. The tax that I think is applied in Switzerland is quite low. I would support an increase of this tax to at least 20% to 30%.
Suggesting that people that support a change of policy should sell all their assets on the spot and “send the money to Africa” because otherwise they are “hypocrites” is kinda ridiculous. I wonder what the world would look like if that really happened… Could be an interesting premise for a movie.
In Switzerland inheritance tax has actually (for most typical receivers i.e. children inheriting from their parents) been successively reduced in the past 2-3 decades. It used to be quite high in some places (ZH, BS, LU), and low in others (SZ, ZG). Now it’s practically zero for all direct descendants in all cantons, but only since a few years.
And Wealth tax of about 1% is actually paid if you have a 2M or more & live in BS or Geneva. ZH is around 0.6%. So it’s not that far off.
I’m not sure if the wealth tax was increased for lowering inheritance tax. But maybe they did it acc. to your suggestion already
I guess the problem with wealth & inheritance tax is that the real rich (>10M) have ways and means to “optimise”, while the “middle class” (1-3M) are then those who pay mainly.
Speaking of inheritance, what do you all think about the land ownership on some countries like UK? If I heard correctly you can’t buy land in UK, you just lease it for 99years from the queen.
In Vaud, tax is high but you can give 50k tax-free every year to each of your children. In ten years 2 parents can give 2M if they have two children. People just don’t do it.
No, human nature is much more complex than this. In each person there’s pursuit of rational. self-interest (I don’t like calling it egoism), and there’s pursuit of altruistic help and responsibility for others. These two forces are bundled together and strength of each depend on the individual character, culture of society and other circumstances.
I am not against altruism, in fact I myself support charity organisations. I’m against the state enforced altruism at point of the gun. It’s easy to be altruistic if you decide that state will rob others (richer) and pay for supporting your good feelings about yourself. I’m such an altruistic person - I voted for robbing rich and giving their money to the poor. For me it’s immoral - no matter how rich the billionaires are.
By reading and partipating to this forum, you confirm you have read and agree with the disclaimer presented on http://www.mustachianpost.com/
En lisant et participant à ce forum, tu confirmes avoir lu et être d'accord avec l'avis de dégagement de responsabilité présenté sur http://www.mustachianpost.com/fr/
Durch das Lesen und die Teilnahme an diesem Forum bestätigst du, dass du den auf http://www.mustachianpost.com/de/ dargestellten Haftungsausschluss gelesen hast und damit einverstanden bist.
