Equality of wealth is too strong a condition, but when you start to think about it, equality of opportunity is actually a pretty weak one. Of course, it would be good to have - I don't disagree with that. But one of the things the principal of equality is supposed to rule out is slavery. Suppose everyone is given the same education up to age 12, was then required to take an exam , with the top 1% becoming owners of the other 99%. That would still be equality of opportunity - but I think you'd agree that wouldn't be real equality.

What I think people mean by equality is that it should not be possible for an individual or group to obtain some overbearing degree of dominance over another individual or group. So that even if there is a disparity in wealth, there should still be a sense in which you are dealing with each other as equals.

> What I think people mean by equality is that it should not be possible for an individual or group to obtain some overbearing degree of dominance over another individual or group.

I think this is the crux of the issue, and money most often is just the most relevant and quantifiable measure of that.

Rawl's "Veil of Ignorance" allows for _some_ inequality, but only as much as you would allow being born into if you didn't know where in the world you'd be born.

> stem from previous inequality of opportunity passed down through generations

There's a positive aspect to this as well, though. My grandparents (coal miner and steel miller) made sacrifices and investments in order that my parents could be the first generation in their family to attend college and become school teachers. My parents made sacrifices and investments in order that my siblings and I could attain a better life than they had.

My wife and I are making sacrifices and investments to help our children attain their individual maximum potential and satisfaction in life. Instituting a giant red "perfect reset button" for each generation precludes the sensibility of those investments and I believe harms society overall.

Is anybody actually proposing a giant red reset button? Because that seems like a particularly egregious straw man to me.

Parents being good to their children is great. Parents sacrificing for their children is great. Keep doing it. But when what is given to child A comes at the expense of child B, then that is not so great.

As an individual, definitely please do focus on your children. But when we're talking about how we design society, we have to look at all the children.

Why? I don't see any way in which it would be "fair" to get an advantage (or disadvantage) because you happen to have been born in a particular family, which is a random process. Of course, there are implementation difficulties associated with it - how would you enforce something like that - but in essence I think it's a pretty good idea.

I have a dollar. I can spend that dollar or save that dollar. If I save that dollar, I can spend it later or have someone that I care about spend it later.

My kids, by luck of birth, were born into a family that values education; we read to them every single night, do crafts, science, engineering things, and tend a garden at home. Why is it fair that they get those advantages?

In addition to being barred from passing along the money I don't spend in retirement, should I also be blocked from reading to my kids more than some community maximum; should our library or museum trips be capped? Should kids be blocked from getting grandma's wedding band just because it has an economic value?

I don't work and save/invest only for myself; I do so for my family, including those who will actuarially live longer than me.

Well, the argument about being blocked from reading to your kids is a pretty good one. Never thought of it like that. You convinced me. Thanks.

There are people out there that believe that sort of thing:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417997/professor-if-yo...

Beyond a certain threshold (or complex set of conditions) accumulated wealth can become self perpetuating. No U.S. legislation I can think of actually affects the sort modest wealth you're describing, but there is arguably some social benefit to limiting future returns to inherited capital.

You and your family also don't exist in a vacuum - you benefit from the society you seem content to watch crumble around you so "your" money (a government created instrument) you made at a job that wouldn't exist without the society around you and using services falling into disrepair and rot because you're dumb enough to conflate hoarding wealth with reading.

> the society you seem content to watch crumble

Steady on, pal!

It's not a random process. Babies aren't allocated by the stork.

The richest people in the U.S. aren't Hapsburgs, Rockefellers, or Kennedys. They largely started out in upper middle class, maybe a little better off than that, and then founded huge empires based on a combination of business savvy and innovative disruption. The Waltons inherited their wealth, but the ones on the richest people list inherited directly from Sam Walton, whose story certainly fits that bill.

"Passed down through generations" makes it seem like there's some sort of grand lineage, and I haven't seen any data to back that up.