I really don’t understand the people that want to leave vast fortunes for their kids. People that didn’t earn the money suck at spending money. How many third generation companies fail because the kids didn’t understand how hard it was to build that wealth in the first place?
The last thing I want is my kids to suck off the family teat instead of making their own fortune. That flies in the face of capitalism.
That is a parenting issue, not a capitalism issue. Having the state take all your assets so that your kids aren't spoiled, seems a tad drakonian to me.
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I really don’t understand the people that want to leave vast fortunes for their kids. People that didn’t earn the money suck at spending money. How many third generation companies fail because the kids didn’t understand how hard it was to build that wealth in the first place?
The last thing I want is my kids to suck off the family teat instead of making their own fortune. That flies in the face of capitalism.
You're a very principled person, I truly envy that.
That is a parenting issue, not a capitalism issue. Having the state take all your assets so that your kids aren't spoiled, seems a tad drakonian to me.
One final point on double taxing inheritance... how many people are we talking about here? What would the tax accomplish?
According to Forbes, there are 46 billionaires in Canada. Forty-six. If you could effectively tax their estates (you can't, because the money is too liquid, but if you could), that is what? Maybe 1 or 2 per year?
If you want to talk about the arbitrary line in the sand of $11M from a couple pages back, apparently there are 1.3M millionaires. The vast majority of those would be people with less than $5m. I couldn't dig up stats for $10M, but apparently there are 10,840 Canadians worth at least $30M US (the definition of ultra-wealthy).
If we use that group as our 'tax the rich' group, we're probably looking at maybe a few hundred per year dying (probably less).
So people want to create a law to double tax those few hundred or so people because... jealousy? Again, what would be the result? Most of that money would flee to other countries that won't arbitrarily punish them. And what is accomplished? We feel better? We somehow have stopped the concentration of wealth? No we haven't, we've simply chased it away.
Meanwhile, our tax laws have gotten more complicated, and lawyers have gotten richer, but tax revenues will have probably gone down, because we will have chased a lot of wealthy people away.
All to solve a problem that doesn't exist because estates are already taxed.
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It is sometimes hard for us to comprehend the difference in scale between million and billion and trillion. A million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 31 years and a trillion seconds is 31709 years.
This post is important
Nobody cares about joe blow the vacuum shop owner or jimmy the petrochemical engineer croaking and taking the hundreds of thousands/low M of dollars they have saved up and giving it to their kids
Money begets money. Anyone who has done any amount of investing surely realizes there is a tipping point where “being smart with your money” bleeds into “unstoppable snowball via simply having a ####load of money”
Here we are losing our minds over the people who educate the next generation of humans and the people who treat you when you are sick over hundreds of dollars a month when temporarily embarrassed millionaires think the government boogeyman is gonna take their scraps if we dare make changes to the status quo
This is an American graph, but the overall stat applies to virtually any place in the world
Giant disclaimer: I am not naive and nothing can be done about this. In fact I’ve advocated really hard in this thread about budgeting, living within your means and being pragmatic about society. However when rich people worship reaches these kinds of levels it just makes me shake my head. There can be people who are irresponsible and bad with money AND the system can be completely broken, it’s not an either or proposition
Canada's tax system is more progressive than in the US, for one. And our overall wealth is more concentrated in the middle class than there's. And we have a smaller 'lower class'.
And the US has a death tax. So clearly the death tax is doing nothing to curb the concentration of wealth.
There are no simple answers to wealth discrepancy.
Canada's tax system is more progressive than in the US, for one. And our overall wealth is more concentrated in the middle class than there's. And we have a smaller 'lower class'.
And the US has a death tax. So clearly the death tax is doing nothing to curb the concentration of wealth.
There are no simple answers to wealth discrepancy.
Canada's tax system is more progressive than in the US, for one. And our overall wealth is more concentrated in the middle class than there's. And we have a smaller 'lower class'.
And the US has a death tax. So clearly the death tax is doing nothing to curb the concentration of wealth.
There are no simple answers to wealth discrepancy.
The US system has a lot more characteristics that are more free market than Canada. You've literally cited one of hundreds of thousands of policies, which are leaving to why things are the way in the USA.
I think both sides of the inheritance tax debate bring up great points. I’m not swayed yet one way or the other but this has been a super interesting discussion.
One question though, for the people that hoard wealth and then pass it on to their kids. If those kids suck at handling money, doesn’t it (truly) “trickle” back into the economy as idiots run around spending it? Isn’t that a good thing? Could it even be arguably a better economic driver than giving it to inept bureaucrats?
I would think given Calgary’s economic trajectory Calgarians want that wealth staying (likely) local to their kids rather than to Ottawa.
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I think both sides of the inheritance tax debate bring up great points. I’m not swayed yet one way or the other but this has been a super interesting discussion.
One question though, for the people that hoard wealth and then pass it on to their kids. If those kids suck at handling money, doesn’t it (truly) “trickle” back into the economy as idiots run around spending it? Isn’t that a good thing? Could it even be arguably a better economic driver than giving it to inept bureaucrats?
I would think given Calgary’s economic trajectory Calgarians want that wealth staying (likely) local to their kids rather than to Ottawa.
Basically impossible to blow a billion dollars and even if you do figure out a way to do it - its going to be other rich people who end up with your money.
It's not just about inheriting money. The cost of housing and schooling is so outrageous that the vast majority of the people getting ahead are doing so heavily subsidized. Renting a slummy apartment and buckling down for a few years in school really isn't an option for many anymore, or at the very least it's significantly harder to do without accumulating large amounts of debt. Then post graduation job options don't pay as well as they used to relative to cost of living.
Personally, I think so estate tax could actually make that worse, as it would encourage parents to give their children more advantages at a younger age.
The solution is to decrease the cost of living.
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I think both sides of the inheritance tax debate bring up great points. I’m not swayed yet one way or the other but this has been a super interesting discussion.
One question though, for the people that hoard wealth and then pass it on to their kids. If those kids suck at handling money, doesn’t it (truly) “trickle” back into the economy as idiots run around spending it? Isn’t that a good thing? Could it even be arguably a better economic driver than giving it to inept bureaucrats?
I would think given Calgary’s economic trajectory Calgarians want that wealth staying (likely) local to their kids rather than to Ottawa.
You make two really good points:
Yes. While the proponents of an estate tax keep using words like hoarding, and concentration of wealth, the reality is that the recipient generation is almost invariably more likely to spend the money. It is the initial generation, the savers, who are doing the hoarding - kids tend to spend.
Another issue with double-taxing estates is that it de-incentivizes people to save. The less people save for their own retirement, the more they must rely on the state to support them. As life expectancy continues to lengthen, the amount of time people are 'retired', along with the number of people in retirement, both continue to climb. If we devalue personal savings, we put more pressure on the public cost of supporting retirees.
We need to encourage more personal savings, not devalue it.
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I think both sides of the inheritance tax debate bring up great points. I’m not swayed yet one way or the other but this has been a super interesting discussion.
One question though, for the people that hoard wealth and then pass it on to their kids. If those kids suck at handling money, doesn’t it (truly) “trickle” back into the economy as idiots run around spending it? Isn’t that a good thing? Could it even be arguably a better economic driver than giving it to inept bureaucrats?
I would think given Calgary’s economic trajectory Calgarians want that wealth staying (likely) local to their kids rather than to Ottawa.
No, cause it gets blown on blow in Monaco.
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Nah, it just exposes the whole notion of capitalism being a meritocracy, where people have equal opportunity as the ridiculous lie that it is; and that luck and which family you're born into play far bigger roles in getting ahead than capitalists are willing to admit.
Can you offer an alternate system where meritocracy is the ruling criteria for wealth? And luck and your family aren't?
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Another issue with double-taxing estates is that it de-incentivizes people to save. The less people save for their own retirement, the more they must rely on the state to support them. As life expectancy continues to lengthen, the amount of time people are 'retired', along with the number of people in retirement, both continue to climb. If we devalue personal savings, we put more pressure on the public cost of supporting retirees.
We need to encourage more personal savings, not devalue it.
I thought a heavier estate tax would be targeting multi-millionaires only?
