It's surprising to me that Europeans aren't more opposed to generational wealth. Didn't many countries fight multiple wars and revolutions to overthrow/re-instate the entrenched agrarian aristocracy? why would Europeans be comfortable allowing the Entrenchment of a modern aristocracy a hundred years later?

It's always one aristocracy fighting another. It will always be. Some are better, some are worse for those below.

Well, that's a long time now that there was no fight between these aristocracies. We are maybe in the longest period without war.

Imagine working hard to guarantee a good future for your children and having the state step in and taking it away.

Imagine working harder that you can possibly imagine to guarantee a good future for your children, and yet not being able to because the deck is stacked against you, or you're just unlucky - and having the state step in to at least give them a fair chance.

Then imagine someone saying that's bad because it's important for other people's kids to be able to live in luxury without ever having to work a day in their lives.

Imagine saying that you working hard, providing for your kids and doing good in life is less because someone else has it better/easier/"doesn't deserve it".

Imagine saying that the only way things can be fair is if you steal from others you think have too much to make things 'equal'.

I am not saying at all that it is "less" (in what way do you even imagine that?),

I am saying that in cases where it has nothing to do with working harder and everything with profiting off the work of others, which is invariably the case with multimillionaires, there must be a limit

If you're gonna play games with framing things as "stealing", the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing from the people who work to produce these returns.

"the everyone whose income is from investment is stealing"

So if millionaires are bad for investing and doing good... does that mean "poor" are bad for not investing? Does that mean that the poor people should suffer when investments go bad? And what about stuff that requires billions - IE: Star Link, Tesla, Spaceships, etc? You think a company shouldn't reward people who risked millions?

Your problem is you don't accept that most people won't take the risks - either because they can't or because they won't. Those that do are what have created the world of miracles we live in. From computer to phones to the site we are talking across right now.

Saying that investers are stealing is a bold faced lie because without those investors there wouldn't be anything to "steal". And if employees had to work at a company that wasn't profitable for decades - IE: Tesla wasn't profitable for 17 years - then a majority of companies wouldn't exist.

outlandish inheritance tax punishes those who work hard and take risks - risks that should be rewarded and not punished by greedy people unwilling or unable to take those risks. "the rich" already pay more than their share and it's simple greed to want more More MORE MOAR! of other peoples money simply because they have the balls to take risks.

Inheritance tax is not about taking it all away. It's about heavily texting everything beyond a reasonable amount. Even if you could at max inherit "just" a million Euro, that be much more than enough to start a comfortable life, while at the same time eliminating a huge factor of the ever widening poverty/wealth gap.

Brah most inheritance taxes a) don't start until you're in the several hundred thousand to millions range and b) are less than 100%.

So you can still leave a pretty large nest egg for your children. And if you really wanted to make sure they would be ok without you, you would have to pay for a good education and taught them the value of hard work. (And used your social network/connections to get them a good first job/seed money to start their own business)

But the parents did and, as such, get to decide where to put that money.

Again: Always time to take money you didn't earn. Greed is an ugly emotion and socialism/marxism/theft is a fail no matter how you try to dress it up.

Seriously? It's not billionaires who "earn" money by doing nothing who are greedy, but those who think such greed should not be allowed to perpetuate across generations? That is the position you're trying to defend?

greed is wanting that which you didn't earn - aka inheritance tax.

I'm defending the fact that people always want what others have. Most people don't give a shit about poor people they just hate rich people. Because they "didn't earn it".

My position is real simple: Taxation is theft and greedy people always want to take from successful people.

Hard pill to swallow but the rich already pay their fair share in most circumstances - IE: the vast majority of taxes is paid by the "rich" in the US for example... but it's never enough. There's never enough of other peoples money to spend to help "the poor".

Super weird take. Most money is in capital. So most money needs to be spent/taxed in capital. Rich get richer and poor get poorer. That can't work. It's not sustainable. If wages would rise at the same rate as capital we might not need to have this conversation."successful" is also a pretty dim interpretation. Are people who care for elderly or teach kids not worth anything just because they are not CEOs? They should be seen as "successful" but instead we respect the people who exploit the most and are the most ruthless and psychopathic. It's really sad to see that money is the only metric for "success" some people employ.

Your position is simply wrong, and absurdly intellectually dishonest.

It starts with "greed is wanting that which you didn't earn". No, that is not what greed is by any stretch of imagination.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/greed

"a very strong wish to continuously get more of something, especially food or money"

It is, by definition, the rich who are greedy. Those who want to limit generational wealth are fighting greed

You're absolutely correct, but for people who have spent their whole lives supporting theft, grift and coercion, it's difficult for them to see themselves as evil.

Like Paul birch said [1]:

> Why do people react this way? Why do they hide? Why are they unable to face the truth? Because the truth would be painful. Not only would they be forced to re-evaluate their whole outlook on life, in a costly paradigm shift that any rational person will wish to avoid; *they would also have to accept that their customary behaviour and cherished beliefs have been wrong; not merely mistaken, but ethically and morally inexcusable.* They would have to admit, to themselves even more than to the world, that they have given aid and comfort to thugs and thieves and murderers, that they have aided and abetted banditry and oppression and fraud, that they are themselves thieves and plunderers and oppressors — in short *that they are evil.*

[1]https://mindstalk.net/paulbirch/Emotional%20Capital%20Blocks...

It's funny how all of that can be applied without any changes at all to attack libertarianism (or anything, really).

It is infact you, the person you are agreeing with, and Paul Birch who have spent their whole lives supporting theft, grift and coercion.

"it's difficult for them to see themselves as evil."

because they aren't evil. The vast majority of people are good and follow the rules as set forth (unless you follow the rule that all people break the laws so it's not like poor people are more "pure" in any sense".

Capitalists aren't evil because they do stuff that makes money any more than poor people are evil because they aren't smart enough, don't work hard enough, aren't lucky enough to have skill, etc.

Musk and Bezo's aren't "Evil" unless in your world view evil means "successful". And that's a shit world view.

or let me spin it this way...

You're absolutely correct, but for people who have spent their whole lives being victims, being jealous and not being willing to work hard enough doing stuff that's valuable to society, it's difficult for them to see themselves as the cause of their failure.

I always found this way of thinking too shortsighted. No matter the millions on your bank account, being rich isn’t fun if the rest of the populace is poor, uneducated and bland, the economy void of investment opportunities, and the environment decaying.

All of those are problems related to lacking education, which is related to poor living conditions in the lower social classes.

By distributing wealth more equally, you improve the world your children are going to live in, and by extension their own lives.