Milton Friedman - Redistribution of Wealth

What people said

bko · 2016-01 · Recommendation

Milton Friedman makes a good argument against the distribution of wealth that addresses your concern directly. Definitely worth a watch. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

conanbatt · 2017-09 · Reference

The idea of inheritance taxes are that once you are dead, you don't care about paying taxes. However, leaving wealth for your children is a huge economic incentive. As Friedman puts it: "People go to an irrational length to provide their kids a better life than they will ever get". If you could effectively put 100% tax on inheritance(which you can't in practice), it means your utility of leaving wealth around becomes 0. Now you want to spend that wealth as much as possible, and it turns into consumption. You would sell and spend everything you have for lavish expenses, which means a reduction in capital investment, which means slower economic growth. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗

bko · 2017-03 · Reference

Milton Friedman on a 100% inheritance tax: [VIDEO] The argument is basically that it would encourage very wasteful behavior. If you think about it, people often work to make the lives of their children better off to a large extent. My grandfather who lives in a poor country living on a pension still sends me $100 he saved up periodically despite the fact that I'm wealthier than him by many factors. Without the ability to pass on wealth to future generations, empires would not be built in some cases, end of life would include many wasteful lavish purchases and the black market for wealth transfer services would balloon

Read the original HN comment ↗