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fordy on 02 August 2011
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Viper1 said:
fordy said:
Viper1 said:

On paper, the concept sounds nice but in practice, it never works.   There is also the question of authority.  Who truly has the right to physicaly take the wealth and property of someone else just because their parents did well in business?  Who has that right?  

Further, what level fo wealth is to be considered the cut off point?  If a mother and father die poor but with no more than $5,000 in the bank, is that money to be taken by the state instead of being inhereted or even willed to their child?   If not $5,000, then how much?   How do you decide what level is fair?   If it is $50,000, what do you do with someone that inherits $49,999.99?   

And who do you distribute it too?   Do you see how complex and unfair this suddenly becomes?

You answered your own question there. THEIR PARENTS did well in business. Unless the parents have some way of taking their wealth with them in the afterlife, whos to say it belongs to the undeserved? At least the society is what got them to such a status, shouldn't society get it back after the deceased have had a good life?

100% means 100%. It's not discriminatory. You die, it's no longer yours.

How did society make the parents rich?  Did society decide those people were going to be rich and make it that way for them?   Or did those parents use ingenuity (as you noted earlier) to achieve their wealth?  Did their ingenuity also perhaps provide that society with a very well valued product or service?  How do you separate the diligent wealthy from the exploitative wealthy?

Let's look at it from an employment perspective.  Those wealthy parents may have employed other workers enabling them to live a decent life.  Is that not payment enough?   Is it not a gift to society the enabling of work itself?   Keep in mind that I say work, not exploitation.  You must separate the two.  I sincerely hope you do not consider all those who are wealthy to have gained it solely through exploitation?  

Society are the consumers. Yes the wealth was collected through ingenuity, and as a reward, they live the rest of their life enjoying it. Does that mean their children deserve the same? Depends. What was their ingenuity? If they display ingenuity, what are they worrying about. That should be enough confidence that they could follow in their parent's footsteps. If they're particularly lazy and believe the world owes them, why should they get it? Society has most likely done more to get the parents where they were.

Work itself is what generates wealth, not enabling the work. If the work wasn't there, people would use the incentive of being paid hansomely for ingenuity to work towards it.