Justice

Would society be better off if no one could inherit money? If everyone had to make their own start in life?

Comments

An affirmative answer might put us on a rather slippery slope. What about the gift of money prior to death? Would you prohibit a parent paying for a child's education? And why just money? Would you prohibit all inheritance, from a farm to a sentimental photograph? It seems that in a general sense of the word "inherit" it is difficult for persons not to inherit all kinds of things (good or bad) from parents / family / care-givers (getting one's own start in life, then, is not easy, for others will invariably have had a hand in each person making a start) and so long as you allow for gift-giving among the living it is hard to see why one would prohibit someone willing that, when she dies, some of her belongings go to her children. So, there are some reasons to hesitate in giving an unqualified affirmative answer to your question(s), but there are also some reasons in a democratic republic which prizes fairness for moderating inheritance to prevent or at least discourage vast amounts of dynastic wealth. If wealth becomes concentrated on a few families, they could form a powerful oligarchy that (at worse) can be a danger to a democratic culture. Still, I suggest some inheritance is reasonable and fair. Determining the exact shape of inheritance laws is beyond my powers, but this will be a topic to be discussed in the USA soon as the Bush tax cuts expire that vastly reduced the inheritance law in our country and our leaders will have to decide whether to extent Bush's policy or not.

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