[lmoml]

I'd posit that the passing of substantial wealth and capital between generations is one of the chief drivers of social decay. In the long term, it causes an immense amount of power to devolve into the hands of a small group of people who have done nothing to prove that they have the wisdom necessary to wield such power for the benefit of humanity.

[JamesBarney]

The vast majority of the super wealthy right now did not inherit the bulk of their wealth.

I don't think this would even rank in my top 5 list of causes of social decay.

[bialpio]

Interesting point, I think I could get behind this way of thinking. Normally, I'd prefer to be taxed mostly on consumption (sales tax, VAT, etc), so my views were that inheritance tax should be lowered - the heirs will be taxed when they spend what they got anyway (or they can sit on the unused pile of cash, fine)1. Unfortunately, society seems to equate rich with smart, hard working, or deserving in some other way, and that is not really the case with people that got their money from their parents.

1) This assumes there are no tricks around inheriting assets that have unrealized gains, I don't know how this works in the US.

EDIT: fixed (?) asterisk. EDIT2: replaced asterisk with 1, cannot figure out how to escape it.