[leggomylibro]

It's wrong that your personal success depends on a long chain of ancestry that you have no control over.

Your success should depend on your intrinsic merits, which every individual should have an equal opportunity to assess and develop for themselves.

Rich people are the same as poor people at birth, they just have more money.

...uh, is this a controversial opinion? I'm confused.

[zaroth]

Highly. Because the corrollary to what you are saying is that parents “shouldn’t” do the best they can for their children.

It’s not wrong at all to work hard so that your children have a better life. For many people, this is the singular reason they work so hard!

I can only aspire to give my children the privilege of a first class education and upbringing, as my father did for me. It’s only recent political movements which try to cast this as something to be ashamed of, or something that needs to be counteracted, and I think many people rightly have a problem with that.

[leggomylibro]

I guess I can see why people would have that reaction as a knee-jerk. But shouldn't we strive for a world where everyone's children have the privilege of education and social standing, and parents can focus on spending time with them, teaching them empathy and understanding, and generally experiencing life with them?

As opposed to one where the knives are out and people think that their children's entire futures must come at the cost of someone else's? And what does that attitude teach the children?

[zaroth]

It all comes down to how you propose going about achieving that.

As long as people have bank accounts and can accumulate wealth, there will be a small percentage of people with savings and large percentage of people without. You can take money from people who have and give it to people who don’t, and we do quite a lot of that already.

As long as there are private schools which you can pay to send your children, and tutors your can hire to help them learn, and housekeepers you can hire to have more time to spend working or with family.... then those people who got high paying jobs and worked hard and saved money will be able to give their children a significant advantage in the world, in theory leading to higher functioning, higher achieving offspring.

When you consider that the top 1% of taxpayers pay more than the bottom 90% combined, I think that’s far from this “knives out” picture you are painting. The top 1% very literally have their wallets out to pay it forward.

[pwagland]

However the top 1% also earn more income that the 90% of the bottom combined, doesn't it make sense that they pay equivalent amounts of tax? Paying a similar proportion is not exactly the same as "having their wallets out".

And I understand that if you are in that 1% then there is a lot of tax being paid… but there is even more being kept.

But you are 100% correct, there are many ways to transfer "wealth" from one generation to the next, inheritances are not the only way to do it. All of what you mention are absolutely ways that you can use the wealth of the parents to increase the chances of the child. You just need to look at the kids of the rulers in the old communist states to see that! And indeed, even in countries with high inheritance taxes, the richest families tend not to change much inter-generationally, I suspect largely for the reasons that you raise.

[zaroth]

Just in case you’re curious;

The top 1% of earners account for ~20% of all income but pay about 40% of all income taxes. The bottom 90% account for about 50% of all income but pay about 30% of all income taxes.

45% of Americans pay no (or negative) Federal tax.

So yes, I think even if it’s a constant percentage (which it’s not) I do respect the top 1% of earners for their massive contribution to our tax base. I don’t personally believe the government has a moral authority to a progressively larger percentage of a person’s incone. And I do believe a person who works harder to earn a larger paycheck is absolutely subsidizing Americans who pay no Federal tax at all, and I’m very thankful for the 1% who pay 40% of the load.

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

[tensor_rank_0]

> And indeed, even in countries with high inheritance taxes, the richest families tend not to change much inter-generationally

inheritance taxes are designed to restrict upward mobility on a timespan of generations. of course the richest families don't change much, the cost of becoming a "richest family" is much higher than the cost of staying a "richest family."

[pwagland]

IMO this is a largely American POV: I'm rich so my children are _allowed_ to have a good education, you are not, so your children _must_ have a poor education. This is perhaps an extreme restatement of your view? But in many countries, a good education is considered the right of every child.

That is _not_ to say that as a parent you cannot make material changes in the chances that your children have. You can afford to give them more attention at home. You can afford to give them a safe and supportive environment in which to grow up in. You can (potentially) afford for them to do an unpaid internship, or even to give them a job in your business where they don't need to fight with a million other candidates for a job with real growth and learning potential.

None of this requires that you leave them an inheritance worth millions. And none of it requires that your kids must have a better school than everyone else. Money already confers so many advantages, schools don't need to accentuate them.

[zaroth]

No I don’t think that’s an accurate (even if extreme) restatement at all. I said nothing at all about “allowed” or “must”. All children in the US are guaranteed access to a free public school education. And we spend quite a bit of money on providing that service! I went to public school K-12 and my children are going to public school — albeit in a wealthy suburb with a top rated school system.

The question is simple — is it legal to send your child to a private school? Is it legal to send your child to summer school and provide them tutors? If it remains legal to do that, then parents with the time and money and inclination will be able to provide a better and more personalized education for their children.

Keep in mind that when sending your children to private school, you still pay the same taxes and you are freeing up resources at the public school for other children. However I believe studies have shown when the highest achieving students leave the rest of the classroom performs worse without them, so it could still be a net negative for the public school.

The real privilege is the time parents spend with their children at home reinforcing the learning they did at school and providing the positive environment and encouragement a child needs to continue striving to learn. That typically requires a two-parent family that isn’t in financial turmoil.

[FeepingCreature]

> intrinsic

How exactly do you expect intrinsic merits to arise if not via your ancestry? Merits don't materialize out of thin air; and even if they did, how exactly would that be fair?

A lottery is more fair than corruption and bribes, but it's still a lottery. There's nothing inherently virtuous about it.

[leggomylibro]

I don't buy into the whole 'pure bloodlines' thing.

It didn't work out too well for aristocracies; 'pure' is potentially another word for 'inbred'. And with the way things are now and have been for centuries, it is money rather than merits that are getting people ahead from square one, so I don't see how you can argue in good faith that ancestry is necessarily as strongly responsible for successful traits as it currently appears to be.

[FeepingCreature]

The point is, it's arbitrary either way.

[grzm]

The thread on "HN Ignore Downvotes CSS" reminded me that often the initial reaction may be negative, but over time if the comment is good it will go net positive. Sit back and enjoy the ride--or at least I wouldn't jump to conclusions based on one (or maybe two?) initial votes in the first couple of minutes. And keep in mind that the HN population is big enough that there will be noise, and more so as the topics become more contentious.

[sevenfive]

But where do intrinsic merits come from? Prenatal nutrition, genetics, role models who taught you "critical thinking" and good character? It's not controversial so much as incoherent.