Quote Originally Posted by rong
But they have the means to do so, that's the point!
If that is the point (which I agree it is important), I think there are better ways to achieve them. Some measure of redistribution is probably necessary to make a welfare state that addresses this, but I don't think it's as much as people think. Taxing wealth because its there isn't the same as -- and can be counter to -- welfare goals. I think that all our welfare goals can be met through straight sales taxes, but if that's not true, a measure of progressiveness would be necessary, but that means something as simple as 5% higher tax on wealthy estates (we already do this and more anyways), which virtually nobody has a problem with. It's when the ideologies that think of things as "unearned wealth" and similar notions that there comes support for huge taxes, like over 50% of estates, which is probably pretty bad

This would still be the case. If the parents couldn't pass it on upon death they would have no reason to do anything other than plough it into their offspring like this. Besides which, a few examples of the current system working aren't proof that it is optimal or that alternatives aren't better.
This looks like a loophole to the tax, which looks like it would create more recklessness

Also, re the corporation issue, ownership of the corporation can't be passed on either, so upon death those shares would have to be sold and any revenue be ploughed back into society. So how would it be an issue?
Parents can't pass on assets to kids?

I wonder if the realisation that funds can't be passed on to offspring would result in an increase in philanthropic projects?
This sort of thing already exists, but to what degree I don't know. Maybe it needs to be more, maybe not

I feel like overall it doesn't really change much. Like take big tech companies for example, most of them are reinvesting at high rates because it's better business for them. This shows the system working, that the inherent incentives are there. I can't think of any examples of true hoarding, where a company sits on money forever and ever. Any company that does that will quickly get crushed by competition. Apple currently does it, but Apple is sort of an outlier that has never been that good at business. It took 30 years or whatever for technology to finally catch up to its business model, and its doing basically jack shit to make sure the company will survive another 30.