Inheriting is becoming nearly as important as working

It seems ridiculous to quibble about middle class people passing down their meager wealth to their children who are in desperate need of some assets. It really doesn't need to be that complicated, just tax corporations and billionaires remotely fairly. Let's not try robbing the middle class while we let every celebrity and investment banker store their hoards in tax free offshore accounts.

Yes, I do. Social programs, like any sane, developed country.

We shouldn't force people to pay out of pocket to get an education, or medical care, or buy a massively expensive car to have the privilege of working.

There are other measures that need to be taken to reduce the attractiveness of real estate as an investment vehicle versus a place to live as well.

The solution to "it's impossible for the average person to afford a place to live" should logically be, "let's make it easier for everyone", not "it's ok because it's not hard for the children of people who are well off once their parents die"

To my mind, the split is between "personal property" and larger assets beyond that. So you'd inherit their stuff, but not their $10,000,000 in stocks and investment housing. There are arguments both ways about exempting a single primary residence, and I think there's reasonable arguments on both sides.

I would argue that parents gifting their estate to their kids while they are still alive is probably more beneficial for society. I'm going to make an assumption that the kids are more likely to put the money to work or spend it somehow compared to the parents.

Personally, I'm not a socialist, so I don't have any problems with people owning things. I do however, agree with the communist idea that ownership is not some sort of holy natural law passed down from the heavens, like a lot of liberals/libertarians believe.

It's a fiction enforced by the state. The true natural state of things is that if you have a horde of wealth, you have access to that wealth only as long as someone bigger and more powerful doesn't come by and decide they want it. When you die, you have no say in what happens to that wealth whatsoever. If your kids can't stop someone else from taking it, there goes your inheritance.

Because of that, ownership is not as black and white as many people think it is. There are terms and caveats to ownership that already exist; for instance, in most cases when you transfer property it's taxed. You can't transfer property to people who live in a country there's an embargo on. You can't just perpetually own property that no one manages after your death and dictate what can be done with it.

There's no reason why property automatically goes to your kids when you die. That rule can be changed too.

As for sentimental items, I don't see why the children of someone who dies can't get first dibs on the sale of that property by the state. A used baby crib may not be sold for much on the open market, but if its sentimental, it might be worth forking over 50 bucks for. Random family photos of strangers are probably less than worthless to most people, so I doubt you'd even have to pay anything for them.

But if your parents bought 10,000 bars of gold bullion, and you want to claim they have sentimental value? I'm sure quite a few other people would like those bars for their "sentimental value" too, so you get dibs on paying $90m for them.

I think corporate speculation into real estate is yet another problem that needs to be fixed as well, but it's a seperate issue.

Realistically, when most people in the US inherit a house they're not moving back into their childhood home. When most people's parents die, it's when those people are well into adulthood and have established their own lives and homes. Usually, they inherit a house and immediately put it on the market where it's sold to the highest bidder anyway. That's how market economies work for the most part. So the kids sell the house and they get a sudden infusion of capital, probably equal to a similar amount of money they've earned thus far from working, which mainly serves to just transmit wealth inequality down generation to generation. At least if the government was in charge of the sale, they could add special requirements onto the buyer. No reason why the law couldn't be that only individuals can buy the house, or people below a certain income, or preferential choice to the children of the parent if they really did want to move into their childhood home.

The alrernative is the status quo where we have "rich families" in the US; financial dynasties who have gone for hundreds of years of just being landed gentry for all intents and purposes. It doesn't seem fair, or far more importantly, it doesn't seem to promote the kind of society we all ostensibly want, where anyone can rise above their upbringing and apply themselves to realize their dreams.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that entrepreneurs as a whole are leeches, but that jab was poorly explained by me. I think most entrepreneurship incredibly brave, yet naive, and yet vital.

What I meant were the children of wealthy people who seem to spend their lives launching useless businesses that have no real business plan and fail after a couple of years of being subsidized by their parents.

I grew up going to a school where there were a lot of very very wealthy kids, some of whom I'm still friends with. It was a very common thread among them after high school where many of them did nothing with their lives, except every so often, they'd get a wild hair and open a surf shop, or a kickstarter project, or an "apothecary". Some fun project that from an outside perspective has no possible chance for success, but they were funded by their parents, and the kids never even put much effort into them because nothing was on the line for them. They'd fail, start a new business, fail again, do it again ad nauseum. Anything but going out and getting a regular job.

I always viewed those ventures as hugely economically wasteful. They took up valuable attention, retail space, investor funding, and so on from actual, useful projects built by people with actual skin in the game and they always squandered most of it.

When I walk past a business who's model makes absolutely no sense, and who never have any customers, yet has remained open, that's usually the first scenario that comes to mind for me.

Probably, but it's also not uncommon for it to be an undue source of stress. Instead of resting and enjoying their final days after a lifetime of work, there are people that feel a social pressure and obligation to put away as much as they can when they die, so that their kids are better off and feel loved by them. I think no matter what there'd be a large social shift amongst older people, but personally I think "focus on enjoying your life and your time with your family" is a more fulfilling, healthier state of being for your golden years than "keep working so your kids are less likely to be poor".

I know this is a massive oversimplification, but it's really sad to imagine people nearing the end of their lives and still stressed about their money, except now it's about what happens to it after their deaths.

Also, at a certain level of wealth, you realize that it would be really difficult to ever spend the money you have amassed in your lifetime. The reasonable thing would be to retire and enjoy that money, spend it and stimulate the economy. The motivation to keep working at that point seems to be to either genuine mental illness, as I think is the case for most billionaires (what could Jeff Bezos possibly need with another billion dollars? I have no idea), or to amass as much as possible to pass down to your kids. Do we really want to encourage extremely wealthy people to use that wealth to become more wealthy? Or are we all better off if those people just say enough is enough, I couldn't spend this money in the 30 or so years I have left even if I was trying, it's time to take it easy?

I don't know, not everyone has kids though, so probably for the same reason as them.

or most of the Canadian tundra. Or our praries. Or the Maritimes. Or...actually, anywhere more than 2 hours from a city, the land here is not worth much.

@ZeroGee

Here's an example from Pemberton BC, half hour from world renowned ski destination Whistler mountain, just two hours from Vancouver. 17.6ac of land is only $1.2m, and has been sitting unsold since 2021-May-20 (maybe login required for history)).

They need to be taxed a LOT more if they're going to sell at these prices. I say any time they buy and sell land, the land value tax needs to jump up to reflect that price, and going further be taxed accordingly. For that lot, the assessment value is a shocking $9933, which means the govt only got $31.57 last year from it. If someone has owned it forever, sure, let that value sit. But if they're going to sell it for a million, that's the time to take a huge cut.

going away from T1 cities, here's 271 ac of land selling for $10,150. Property tax is $0 lol you probably actually get money for leaving resources on it.