I agree with you that, if we need to tax something to pay for our government services, then inheritance tax is arguably not a terrible choice.
But a lot of your arguments seem a bit problematic to me. First, as a point of basic practicality, why 100%? Couldn’t most of your aims be achieved with a lesser percentage? That would also smooth out weird edge cases.
There is something fundamentally compelling about the idea that every generation should start fresh, free from the accumulated advantages or disadvantages of their ancestors.
This quote stood out to me as interesting. I know this isn’t what you meant, but as a society it would be really weird to collectively decide “don’t give the next generation fire, they need to start fresh and rediscover that for themselves. We shouldn’t give them the accumulated advantages of their ancestors, send them to the wilderness and let them start fresh!”.
Also, sometimes inequality functions a bit like division of labor.
Imagine that everyone has 11 units of resources, and you need 20 to start a project. Compare to a situation where most people have 10 units of resources and one person has 30. There is no guarantee that the rich person will start the project, but the chances are probably higher than in the first scenario.
I am not sure that example fully makes sense. If trade is possible then two people with 11 units of resources can get together and do a cost 20 project. That is why companies have shares, they let people chip in so you can make a Suez Canal even if no single person on Earth is rich enough to afford a Suez Canal.
I suppose in extreme cases where everyone is on or near the breadline some of that “Stag Hunt” vs “Rabbit Hunt” stuff could apply.
Ah, I meant something like people have 11 units of resources, but they need ~10 to survive, so 10 of them would have to invest all their savings… which is unlikely to happen, because coordination is hard.
You are right that companies with shares are the way to overcome it. I was thinking deeper in history, where e.g. science could only happen because someone had a rich sponsor. Without the rich sponsors, science probably would not have happened; Newton would be too busy picking the apples. Only a small fraction of rich people becomes sponsors of science, but it’s better than nothing.
Perfect equality could mean that if somehow things go wrong, they will go equally wrong for everyone, so no one will have the slack necessary to find the way out… is my intuition about this scenario.
I agree with you that, if we need to tax something to pay for our government services, then inheritance tax is arguably not a terrible choice.
But a lot of your arguments seem a bit problematic to me. First, as a point of basic practicality, why 100%? Couldn’t most of your aims be achieved with a lesser percentage? That would also smooth out weird edge cases.
This quote stood out to me as interesting. I know this isn’t what you meant, but as a society it would be really weird to collectively decide “don’t give the next generation fire, they need to start fresh and rediscover that for themselves. We shouldn’t give them the accumulated advantages of their ancestors, send them to the wilderness and let them start fresh!”.
Also, sometimes inequality functions a bit like division of labor.
Imagine that everyone has 11 units of resources, and you need 20 to start a project. Compare to a situation where most people have 10 units of resources and one person has 30. There is no guarantee that the rich person will start the project, but the chances are probably higher than in the first scenario.
I am not sure that example fully makes sense. If trade is possible then two people with 11 units of resources can get together and do a cost 20 project. That is why companies have shares, they let people chip in so you can make a Suez Canal even if no single person on Earth is rich enough to afford a Suez Canal.
I suppose in extreme cases where everyone is on or near the breadline some of that “Stag Hunt” vs “Rabbit Hunt” stuff could apply.
Ah, I meant something like people have 11 units of resources, but they need ~10 to survive, so 10 of them would have to invest all their savings… which is unlikely to happen, because coordination is hard.
You are right that companies with shares are the way to overcome it. I was thinking deeper in history, where e.g. science could only happen because someone had a rich sponsor. Without the rich sponsors, science probably would not have happened; Newton would be too busy picking the apples. Only a small fraction of rich people becomes sponsors of science, but it’s better than nothing.
Perfect equality could mean that if somehow things go wrong, they will go equally wrong for everyone, so no one will have the slack necessary to find the way out… is my intuition about this scenario.