[baragiola]

This type of policy is proven to be regressive because:

1) The really wealthy find loop holes.

2) It discourages saving and investment.

3) It encourages consumption and spending on frivolities.

Imagine if everybody would have to start from the ground up, we would rarely see any progress at all.

I like Bill Gates' approach, he gave his children some fortune and allegedly will donate the rest of it

[lucideer]

> 1) The really wealthy find loop holes.

The really wealthy will always find loopholes in any system: that's not an excuse to do away with all societal structure or rule of law. No system can be perfect, but the idea is to strive to close such loopholes (even if this may be somewhat of an arms race—many things in life are)

> 2) It discourages saving and investment.

It discourages saving, but not investment (and only the latter has intrinsic societal benefit). One could argue it might skew investments more toward short term return, but I doubt this.

> 3) It encourages consumption and spending on frivolities.

Spending is generally framed as societal good and the definition of a "frivolity" is highly subjective.

However, if we do run with the subjective, I would argue that the biggest driver of frivolous spending is having a lot of (/too much) disposable income, which often stems from inheritance.

It's also often argued that inheriting does little to teach the "value" of money and as such encourages frivolity (though tbh I don't know how much I believe this).

> Imagine if everybody would have to start from the ground up, we would rarely see any progress at all.

Wow. Are you seriously proposing that only those who inherit riches can improve the world??? Or, worse yet, only those should have that opportunity???

> This type of policy is proven to be regressive

Define "proven" here. Where/when has this policy been implemented? What were the environmental factors?

[jacobajit]

In general, savings is investment, as an identity. An economy must save in order to invest for higher future standard of living.

Short term investment goals is precisely the problem. If one invests for a return only in their lifetime (for consumption), one can't make longer-term investments that have intergenerational benefits (consider the concept of investment broadly).

Only the state would be able to do that, so you'd better hope for a good state.

[nybble41]

Only the state is capable of intergenerational investment? There are a number of long-lived, fiscally successful private organizations that would beg to differ. Not everyone is hyper-focused on short-term yields, and as I see it the average politician is no more likely to take the long view and sacrifice their own present well-being for the benefit of future generations than anyone else.

[nybble41]

> It discourages saving, but not investment (and only the latter has intrinsic societal benefit).

Not true. To begin with, what most people think of as "savings" is actually an investment—unless your savings take the form of cash stuffed in a mattress. An interest-bearing savings account is an investment, after all, even before we consider that larger sums would normally be held in money-market accounts or CDs. Even if you did keep your savings stuffed in a mattress, though, that saving still benefits others. You produced something of value and you're not spending the cash you received in return on things other people also want to buy. This reduces the supply of cash in circulation relative to the amount of goods available to be purchased and thus lowers prices for everyone else compared to what they would have had to pay if you'd chosen to spend the money. Normally in a healthy, growing economy this forbearance would be rewarded through appreciation of the purchasing power of the unspent cash over time—price deflation—but TPTB have decreed that price deflation is evil and must be avoided at all costs. (The key lesson here is that it's a really bad idea to treat any fiat currency as a store of value, since they can always make more and dilute your savings.)

>> 3) It encourages consumption and spending on frivolities.

> Spending is generally framed as societal good and the definition of a "frivolity" is highly subjective.

I'll grant that "frivolity" is subjective but consumption is pretty much the opposite of a societal good. It's not a bad thing, of course. Production without consumption would be pointless and wasteful. However, it's the process of production that provides value to others; consumption is just the opposite, claiming one's own personal share of what all the members of society have collectively produced.

> Are you seriously proposing that only those who inherit riches can improve the world???

It is an objective fact that those few lone individuals who can claim to have lived their lives free of unearned gifts from their parents or other interested parties (apart from life itself, which is a major concession) have not been particularly successful at improving the world beyond the narrow scope of their own necessities. That's because they're spending their entire lives and all of their energies just trying to survive. Just having parents who take even the most basic care of you as you're growing up is a huge inheritance in its own right. More indirectly, we have the vast stores of knowledge left to us by previous generations as well as a huge amount of capital to amplify the productivity of our efforts. We tend to focus on mere differences in inherited material possessions, but in reality that pales in comparison to the vast riches gifted to even the poorest among us has by those who came before.

[chmod775]

> The really wealthy find loop holes.

Even the kid of this Tycoon ended up becoming the CEO of his father's company. What a coincidence!

He won't inherit wealth, but he already did inherit the means to become wealthy himself. Probably is by now.

> It discourages saving and investment.

It won't do so significantly for your average Joe. Rich people not hoarding their money can also arguably be good for the economy. Though I'm undecided on that issue.