[throwaway2037]

    It is financially unfeasible for most middle class households to pass down their homes to their children due to the estate tax kicking on assets over 100,000 eur.

That seems OK to me. Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children? To be clear, passing down an entire home tax free in a highly developed nation is a huge financial advantage. Literally: 1,000+ EURs per month, for life would be saved. Why do so many people on HN think this should be normal to allow? In my eyes, this is the path to Old World aristocracy. The purpose of inheritance taxes is to reduce this advantage.

I can guess what the reply/replies will be: "Oh, but housing is more expensive now. There is no choice but to use inheritance to give my children a head start." It would be better to ask why housing has gotten so out of control, not using inheritance to side step the issue.

[jterrys]

You know, it's interesting. 100,000 eur really isn't a lot of money. I wager decent houses probably go double or triple that. Still, an entire life savings would most likely go into paying for that. Decades of labor in a country with small salaries and large taxes. 100k is nothing. Comparatively, to the rich that dominate the socio-economic and political landscape, it's probably a fun weekend vacation somewhere. I think that's what you dread: The rich that can afford to live lavishly. But you're harking over the barely haves, the not rich.

It's interesting.

A country with dwindling birthrates far below replacement levels perplexed by the fact that its people are refusing to father the next generation when they can't even provide a home for them. (It wouldn't even be tax free, by the way. Because the original proprietors bought and paid taxes on the house. What you're suggesting is double taxation :))

But it's okay. France has solved that problem: Make it illegal to take statistics on ethnic origins, let the poors of the world come flood your land, let them work for lower wages, and then act surprised when their culture is fundamentally incompatible with yours. Your streets are now unfamiliar. Unsafe. Dirty. They don't share your values of cleanliness and respect. Your freedom of expression. Don't worry. Their children won't be able to inherit their homes either. That's fine with them though: because they'll send their money back to their homelands where they can build villas with it, (or comfortably live in a ghetto squalor in Paris because it's still better than the conditions back home.)

[vasco]

> Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children

The reason why we have inheritances is people in power convinced each other that regular people will work harder throughout all their lives if they know they can give their children a better life. Meaning the economy is way better with some inheritance present than without inheritance.

Love is a powerful thing and while most people would agree with you that in theory they'd like all children to have the same opportunities, once their babies are born they will fight forever to give them the best conditions they can.

I agree with inheritance taxes, probably not 100%, but wanted to explain the perspective of people that want full untaxed inheritances.

[ExoticPearTree]

> That seems OK to me. Why should children who are lucky to be born into a stable middle class family have a large financial advantage over other children?

Are you for real? Because it is not my or my children's fault other children don't have anything to inherit. This is how life works. You do whatever you can to get ahead of other through any means necessary to have a better future. You should not exepect the same outcome for people from different walks of life.

And just because not everyone can afford a house it is not my problem either.

> In my eyes, this is the path to Old World aristocracy. The purpose of inheritance taxes is to reduce this advantage.

So the world would be better if everyone was poor, right? The purpose of inheritance taxes is for the government to steal from your hard earned assets. Just because you're jealous of someone who inherits a big house or whatever will not make the world a better place.

[RugnirViking]

> This is how life works. You do whatever you can to get ahead of other

Except its not how life works. Because we decided to make a law against it. You're trying to argue that the law is bad by... saying that it's not a natural law of the universe (no law is, murder is neutral on a cosmic scale)

> So the world would be better if everyone was poor, right

if you're arguing in this sort of bad faith its pointless discussing anything. Social mobility is demonstrably different across different nations, and policies do exist that actually affected social mobility. Social mobility correlates strongly with GDP. If you want a wealthy society, make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons

[ExoticPearTree]

> If you want a wealthy society, make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons

This is a very wrong assumption. You cannot have the same outcome even if you start from the same position - everyone poor or everyone rich.

[RugnirViking]

> You cannot have the same outcome

you aren't arguing seriously. reread what I said. You're replying as though I said the complete opposite of what I actually said.

[ExoticPearTree]

you said

> make it so hardworking people born into poor families can outcompete wealthy failsons

I said you can't and you do not agree. Please tell me how do you see this happening and what is the barrier to this now?

[RugnirViking]

you replied to that by saying > You cannot have the same outcome

I explitly talked about outcome being dramatically different. Children of wealthy people who have no motivation to contribute anything to the world, learn no skills, and are lazy, should not end up on the same level as hardworking skilled children of poor parents. They should end much lower. Barriers to this include enormous inheritances, the housing market (prices driven up enormously by hoarding and inheritance), the cost of university education, vast disparities in the quality of education available in different areas, and nepotism in the jobs market.

These factors are very different in different countries. I forget the name of the stat but looking at the percentage of people born to bottom fifth income parents ending up as top fifth income earners themselves is quite telling. If I remember right there is a dramatic difference between similarly "developed" countries. I looked and couldn't find the original data I read but here [0] is similar, showing denmark children born to bottom quintile parents reach top quintile 14% of the time (perfect unachievable meritocracy would be 20%), wheras in the US its 8%.

It goes without saying, but the reason it is important to point out that it is different between countries is to argue against vibes based arguments of people who just throw their hands up and say "oh but woe is us this is the natural way of the world why rage against nature it will always be thus" simply because they think that is the case without any data whatsoever. This is literally table stakes for even discussing the problem.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/02_econ...

[peyton]

Well the taxes pay to enforce property rights. It sort of becomes your problem if others don’t have a place to live and you won’t pay men with guns to keep them from taking your place to live.

[ExoticPearTree]

I don't think we are on the brink of societal collapse :)

And it is just like now, I use a gun to shoot people that try to enter my house. What you're saying is that I should have people with guns in the house for the times that I'm not at home.

How is this different than today when your house gets robbed during the day?

[jampekka]

Some do think so, and have data to back it up.

https://archive.is/XrYck

Anecdotally to me USA even looks like it's collapsing every time I visit it. In the larger cities there are homeless everywere, and often literally next to luxury yachts and limousines. A lot of the infrastructure seems like it's literally gonna collapse, and lots of it really does. It's quite a cyberpunk vibe when compared to e.g. the nordic countries.

Of course there are similar problems in many european countries too. Especially England is quite bad w.r.t homelesness and infrastructure. But England is in many ways culturally closer to USA than most europe.