I don’t think you know what this means
Maybe? Like, certainly it's nice and good to pass along something to your children. But giving them the ability to just sit around and play video games every day for the rest of their life? What's good about that? (Yes, I know, many inheritors end up doing productive things with their money.)
I would advocate for dropping the inheritance tax exemption to something much much lower, and then taxing nearly all (or even all) of an inheritance above that amount.
As much as I am not a fan of Bill Gates, I 100% approve of his plan to earmark pretty much all of his wealth for philanthropy before he dies. I am still uncomfortable with the idea that we have to depend on the largess of a few billionaires in order to direct resources to make the world better. But I think that's massively better than passing on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to offspring who didn't do anything to earn it.
> to be clear, the main point of generating wealth is to generate value for society. Society then pays you for that value with the wealth that you get...
That sounds like an overly idealized view of how things work. Many people get super rich for reasons that have little to do with generating wealth for society. And even if they do generate wealth for society, their reward is usually comically greater than the wealth they generate.
If you cap my ability to do that, that removes the main driver of my motivation.
Why allow kids to benefit from their parents at all? EG, why do immigrant kids get to benefit from their hardworking parens' ability to come to this country and build a life?
Perhaps a better question is to ask if great responsibility comes with great power. Because extreme wealth is great power. And money is not some mandate for power.
In your value system, is blowing it on yourself better?