[vmception]

Seems excessive, how well is the Korean government in stewarding public resources and identifying areas of the economy to direct capital? Do they have a history of being the proper stewards of this money than a private person?

[jjj123]

Since when is that the only purpose of taxes?

I have no idea how efficiently the Korean govt distributes capital, but there are other reasons inheritance taxes are a good thing. Primarily because they limit the concentration of generational wealth in the 0.1%.

[vmception]

The aggregate outcome of government taxation is as a deterrent to sitting on piles of cash that year. Most fiscal policy via taxation is incentivizing the private property owner to create certain kinds of transactions in the economy, and if they fail to do so then the government runs a calculation on the remainder.

Thats the outcome whether any individual representative or tax policy expert would say that. The private persons operate within the existing world and have no utility in making an opinion on the purpose of tax, only reacting and playing within the system.

As such, it is surprising then that this family has not created transactions that would mitigate or nullify the state’s claim on their property.

[atat7024]

Unless all the tax money is used for subsidies/grants etc for companies owned by the elite/.01%.

[msg3]

According to the Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, the Korean government (or rather the dictator Park Chung Hee) is directly responsible for a lot of the success of the large Korean companies like Hyundai and Samsung.

It's been a while since I read the book (Bad Samaritans I think it's called), but I believe he offered them large government backed loans to move out of palm oil production and into more profitable areas like semiconductors.

[vmception]

Sounds like a good capital allocation by the government at the time! I'm guessing Samsung paid them back?

Any sectors that the Korean government is funding well or should be funding better these days?

[msg3]

I'm not sure about the current situation, but I believe the loans were maintained for a long time to ensure a certain level of government control over the large Chaebols.

[bobthepanda]

Most of the early stuff probably would have been wound down during 1998 when the Asian Financial Crisis brought down Daewoo and the IMF had to stabilize the government’s spending.

[hogFeast]

I would look at what the Lee family has done at Samsung. How well did they steward capital? So well, that the share price rose significantly when Lee Kun-hee actually died, and it looked like they would finally lose control.

Kun-hee seemed like a very odd guy (there are videos online, people who posted this in SK got picked up by the NIS, of him having orgies with prostitutes). Jae-yong is less offensive but has a reputation as an incompetent. Success came in spite of their leadership, not because of it (the mobile business, in particular, seemed totally accidental...central office actually tried to stop the US mobile business growing).

Inheriting wealth doesn't mean you inherit talent.

[vmception]

Thanks! Is there any percentage of tax to the Korean government where your answer would change? It seems everything you wrote is true whether the tax is 1%, 10%, 30%, or the 50% that occurred here, let alone greater amounts.

Is there a different outcome of the distribution of this money that you would support as well?

It seems the primary constant is that this family of directors should not steward it.

As an outside observer, not from Korea, I'm the opposite of bothered that a wealthy person had orgies with prostitutes. That wouldn't be an example of odd to me, it wouldn't be a euphemism for another stronger word, and it would have no bearing on my opinion of whether they get a haircut on their estate.

This is useful context as nobody else has replied yet.

[hogFeast]

No, my point is that having a high inheritance tax leads to improved efficiency of capital markets. The Lee family have relied on literally illegal manoeuvres (they rigged a shareholder vote on an subsidiary acquisition) to maintain control, it is best that a company is guided by economic motives and not dictatorship by minority groups (again, the cost to Samsung has been substantial, that is why the company has pretty much always traded at a heavy discount).

I would read more about Kun-hee...the issue with the orgies is not moral judgement, the issue is that it paints a picture of someone who has a lot of other stuff going on: he spent almost no time at work (reportedly, he was obsessed with films and spent 95% of his waking time comatose watching films), he made others treat him as essentially a God...which, tbf, he basically was in SK...he was convicted of serious crimes twice, he oversaw massive political corruption (he gave literally tens of millions to individual politicians, his total bribes are probably in the billions), he gave impromptu incoherent rants that lasted multiple days that senior execs had to attend, no-one was allowed to make eye contact or look at him whilst their eye level was higher than his, factory workers weren't allowed to park within eyesight of his office, anyone who met him had to eat a mint before they spoke to him...this is just a small subset of the crazy shit...it is always funny to me that people will abandon all logic in order to reflect in their own self-regard (the reason why people say having prostitutes with orgies doesn't matter is because they want other people to know they are very liberal and forward-thinking...if you actually care about making money, it is difficult to think of a worse sign).

[vmception]

I gotta read about this guy!

His comatose film obsession is just as detrimental to his ability to make money as spending too much time with illegal sex workers. The commonality would be addiction, or more specifically neglecting other obligations. If neither of those things caused one to neglect other obligations, then there is nothing liberal and forward-thinking about not caring about the activity.

[hogFeast]

...I have come across quite a few execs with a prostitute habit...in no cases has it been unrelated to their job performance (and btw, I live somewhere where it is legal...it is usually correlated to either sex addiction and/or other addiction/compulsive behaviour).

[speeder]

I have ADHD.

A common version of ADHD happens when the person brain doesn't produce enough dopamine, so the person in question keeps seeking more, so people with ADHD often have addictive behaviour, even to stuff people didn't considered addicting at all.

But this variation of ADHD also can make the person a high performer, often the best dopamine kicks come from doing interesting work, for example coders doing new stuff or fixing really bizarre bugs, or a CEO having to navigate the company through a very tricky situation.

There is some resaeerch trying to figure out if it has a link to hunter genes (ie: people with this variation would be more inclined to hunt, and be persistant during hunting, at same time switching targets if necessary, but these adaptations make the person poor in following schedules, thus a poor farmer)

[vmception]

what about executives with a binge watching habit? its fine if you aren't aware

[notfromhere]

Not sure why the assumption is that governments are incompetent until proven otherwise. Capital allocation inside corporations is more opaque and byzantine; I don’t know where this idea of corporations being more efficient comes from because I don’t think anyone that’s worked at one would say it’s efficient.

[grumple]

This is a drop in the bucket compared to their national budget, which is 493 billion this year. Billions are peanuts at the scale of a national government.