Quote:
Originally Posted by Sliver
Can you expand on this one a bit? I get it in principle, but my wife and I are planning and working really hard to give our kids a leg up. Like, I could have a bigger/better house and newer cars if I wanted, but my financial goals are more directed at my kids. I want to help them buy their first houses, pay for their university educations, and just generally help them move forward in life moreso than making things materially better in my own.
I look at any wealth my wife and I accumulate as familial wealth, since you can't take it with you. I'm planning and hoping we can start some generational wealth in my family for my kids and their kids by making really long-term decisions now versus just decisions that affect me until I'm 85, say. I wouldn't want a system where I'm incentivized to buy a new car to just blow my money over saving, growing and transferring wealth from one generation to the next.
Like, I want to buy my kids and future grandkids more financial security. Some people rather travel and live in a huge house. I don't want to take a tax kick to the nuts because of how I'm choosing to spend my money.
Could be I just don't get what you mean, though.
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That's how generation inequality accumulates though. Lets pretend you started at the basic average of life. Through your hard work, you accumulate advantages you can pass on to your children. They may do the same, advancing your family.
Now take someone who wasn't average, and started mcuh lower. Maybe they are disadvantaged by race, or a physical disability, or unforeseen sickness midway through life. Their children grow up in worse schools, live farther from good jobs, and maybe have to work instead of getting an education.
Your child ends up with benefits, while the other child does not. Your child lives in a bigger home you helped pay for, got a solid education that helps with a higher paying job etc. Eventually it concentrates wealth, just like the landlords of old living in castles. Is that fair, just because of who they were born to?
I know the idea sucks that maybe you shouldn't be able to hand everything down, but alternatively that money could go back to society, so everyone has a more level playing field.