[plantain]

The problem is the strong desire (requirement?) to accrue wealth is the foundation stone of all capitalism - if you remove reasons to pursue wealth such as desire to support your offspring, you undermine the incentive to build bigger and better things.

It seems to me that inheritance should be taxed at a rate that it dwindles to zero after a few generations to balance equal opportunity and distribution of wealth with the incentive to build things to provide a better existence for our offspring.

[mcguire]

No estate tax system that I'm aware of confiscates all of the deceased's assets. They may take enough to be problematic for people in high-capital, low-cash flow businesses like farming, but that is not worth long-term inequality.

I'm not sure about the numbers, but many of the great, inter-generational fortunes may have been built on businesses (consider the oil business) that are problematic for future generations (although great for the inheriting offspring).

[sokoloff]

The "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations"-* is already a well-established pattern (if it was newer, we'd call it a meme, but this concept is older than that word).

* - The general inability of grandchildren to effectively manage the wealth passed down to them from their grandparents and parents. This is made even worse when it's an operating business.

[mcguire]

Old money (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_money):

The Du Pont family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Pont_family#Family_tree

The Vanderbilt family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanderbilt_family#Vanderbilt_f...

The Rockefeller family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_family#Members

The Astor family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_family#Astor_family_tree

The Ford family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford_family_tree

The Mars family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_family

S.C. Johnson & Sons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._C._Johnson_%26_Son

We'll have to wait and see for the Kochs and Hunts.

[runako]

Along these lines, what's fun is to look at property sale records.

A shocking number of large properties in the US have not been sold in multiple generations. A lot of old money "just" owns land and extracts rents for that ownership. Many of those people have jobs, so they do not necessarily look like the idle rich. But they have a somewhat easier time because they receive some portion of the ongoing value of land (this could be rents, timber sales, mining rights, etc.).