[iammisc]

> You can either allow inter-generational wealth to build, or claim to be a meritocracy; not both.

What has happened in America is a major (and I mean major) shift towards individualism. The 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' mentality was never applied to people independent of their family. For most history, people were indivisible from their family, except perhaps in law.

If dad rises through the ranks, people would have viewed that as dad pulling his family up in status. The meritocracy would have been applied to what was then seen as the fundamental building block of society -- the family.

Today, we view individuals as the fundamental building block of society.

The two views are incompatible, IMO.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I don't recall the objections to inherited wealth as being about "they kept it all in the family" as opposed to "it was only the first born son".

The US has long had profound objections to inter-generational wealth transfer, entirely independent of our conceptions of the relative importance of family vs. individual.

[iammisc]

> The US has long had profound objections to inter-generational wealth transfer, entirely independent of our conceptions of the relative importance of family vs. individual.

No it hasn't. If that were true, we would expect strict inheritance laws discouraging wealth transfer. But we've never seen that in the United States.

By and large, people saw individuals as inseparable from their family. Even the most individualistic thinkers of the 18th century would be considered practically Confucians today.

The United States has long embraced the inheritance of wealth. What we reject is the inheritance of title that gives some man authority or primacy over another independent of his own contribution to society as measured by his wealth. In the UK that we left, a commoner could have been richer than an old-money aristocrat, but not be considered his equal due to nepotistic aristocracies.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> If that were true, we would expect strict inheritance laws discouraging wealth transfer. But we've never seen that in the United States.

The legal mechanism for this has been the inheritance tax, which has existed more or less since the founding of the republic. Historically, it served as a substantial reducer of inter-generational wealth transfer. However, over the last 5 or 6 decades, objections by the rich to moving the thresholds to keep up with inflation and/or typical wealth levels among the top quintile etc. and/or rates for this tax have made it much less effective in this role.

[iammisc]

But inheritance taxes have existed pretty much everywhere, so that's hardly some unique characteristic that can be used to indicate a supposed American disdain for intergenerational wealth.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The 2nd half of this link has some fairly extensive quotes from Madison, Jefferson and Washington on the idea of inherited wealth.

https://andrewtobias.com/jefferson-madison-and-washington-on...

I think you'll find that this was a very different take on it than the one held by those in power back in England at the time.

[closeparen]

Toqueville considered America fundamentally structured to prevent the emergence of aristocratic families, not because of anything to do with taxes, but because fortunes are distributed among all the children and thus naturally dissipate. As opposed to old world system of giving all to the first-born son.

[iammisc]

And he's mostly right. Americans are uniquely unable to stay rich for many generations. Most generational wealth in america disappears after a few generations.

In my comment history, you'll find a few comments about the issue of couples having fewer and fewer children.

Toqueville's points work so long as people have on average, more than two kids. With the decline in birth rate, we risk descending into primogeniture by attrition, which is terrible.