During WWII many American Japanese families wealth was expropiated and they were placed in concentration camps for the wars duration. By the 1970s they were among the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country. Interestingly those who had been interned had done relatively better than those who had not.
The key is in defining 'success'. Some consider success to be how much wealth you can accrue. Others consider it to be how much useful knowledge you can gain, i.e., value to humanity. I am with Michael Faraday in his quote: “I have always loved science more than money,” he once told a publisher.
I absolutely do not consider avarice as success; it is an abomination
" Wealth, the proxy for a good genome, seems a reasonable metric."
The degree of wealth is the determining factor. Enough wealth to support a family is a worthy goal—the obsession with wealth, i.e., avarice, not so much.
I believe the rise in avarice is a significant cause of the downfall of Western Civilization.
We have exchanged before and I respect your thoughtful views.
Let's go with the assumptions that: a) widening wealth inequality is destructive for a reasonably contented and stable society; and b) given "a", some means of preventing or alleviating this inequality is desireable for the benefit of such a society as a whole.
It's at this point where I have had problems. The means to achieve reduced wealth inequality (not eliminate it, but reduce it to some broadly acceptable level, with sunstantial mutual acceptance among all segements of society) seems to be: a) confiscation (taxes) after the acquisition of such wealth; and/or b) external limits on how the wealth is acquired.
To be clear, I'd include annual income as a part of wealth, simply because surplus income every year is a major means for acquisition of asset wealth.
First step would be imposition of an inheritance tax to trim down excessive (the level is arguable, of course) assets from passing from one generation to the next, intact.
Now society has trimmed away generational wealth and its means of acquisition. Next is to prevent excessive wealth acquired during an individual's lifetime. This would be their annual income and their growing base of assets.
We could choose to limit annual income in some fashion. There could be regulation pf maximum salary for any given endeavor. Maximumrate of return for passive income.
Or we could allow the individual to acquire however much he/she wanted per year, but then tax it away from them each year.
Or we could allow them to keep most of their earnings, but have a wealth tax on assets, who would strip away personal value each year.
There may be other policy methods. These methods could be used in combinations, too.
So that's where I've gotten to, and yep, administered as designed (assume fairly and consistently), they would tend to decrease wealth inequality, but gosh, it would create an environment for personal endeavour that I would find oppressive.
What are your views on this?
PS
You'll note that I'm not listing moral education--where society emphasizes that unbridled acqusition is greed, and that greed is greatly reviled across all social/economic strata. I just don't see that as ever being possible in this era. It was possible before--maybe--but not now.
The problem the super-rich cause for society in general is what they are allowed to do with their money. They can gain control over the populace. Here is one example: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of representative democracy. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976, and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions: First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified the idea that money is free speech, thereby giving entities of wealth and power total influence over elections.
"What do you see as workable policies to combat this? Do you think new court decisions, legislation, or...?"
We should eliminate the rich's power to control others' lives. This should happen through both judicial and legislative means.
A quick start would be to eliminate the idiotic concept that money is speech. It is hard to imagine Supreme Court members taking this seriously—but they did.
Money is not evil, but the obsession with it is.
What would you do to eliminate the control of the rich over the lives of others? Said differently, what would you do to eliminate the plutocratic oligarchy we live under?
I’m always interested in discussion and would not normally “butt” in, Realist is a fun read. However, I thought I’d add/reply myself to a small part of your comment if I might. You said,
“First step would be imposition of an inheritance tax”
We already have an inheritance tax. Always had. Perhaps you mean a wealth tax?
As to the current inheritance tax—waay back when, as a young student I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for basically ‘free’ and read that paper daily. They had a yearly analysis rating the wealthiest people in the U.S. In those halcyon days, the most wealthy had “only” a few billion dollars. The dot.com days were still ahead. One of the wealthiest people was Sam Walton of Walmart fame. He was worth $12B or so. A year or so later Bill Gates came on the scene. There were others, but they are not important for this anecdote. Every year I’d open up the WSJ on that day and turn to see who was in the (horse) race to be the wealthiest man alive in the U.S. Was it now Gates? Could Walton keep up? Etc. Walton of course grew in wealth as his store multiplied. Billions and billions…
Then one year, I opened the WSJ only to see that Sam Walton was not even on the first page of the “wealthiest” report, I had to turn the page to see that he was now 8th or 6th or something at $4B. What happened? Well, I read on and suddenly more ‘Waltons’ appeared—two sons and a daughter, all now billionaires. $2-3B each somewhere down to 10-12th place or so of wealthiest individuals. I was a bit taken back, as at that time Reagan folk were attempting to lower the inheritance tax because what was on the books was too onerous and confiscatory and after Reagan managed to get it down to 55%!
So I asked myself, what good is an inheritance tax when the ultra wealthy—like the Waltons have means to escape it? The Walton family is now worth a total of $500B dollars as of 5 minutes ago! (ChatGPT—I no longer read WSJ)
So on to a wealth tax and Bill Gates. Gates made his money in MS and during that period described above reached the $100B mark (IIR). How did he hold onto such wealth? Well, I’m no expert, but he and Melinda started their own charity and began to give of their fortune to it. Of course, they ran the charity, so the billions they gave—tax free—remained under their control. Didn’t seem to hurt Bill either since his current, personal, net worth is estimated by Bloomberg at $107B, and Gates has long been out of the MS business! Diversification don’t you know.
Inheritance tax would seem to be for the “little” guy, which is the reason I’m suspicious of such. By little guy, I mean the rancher, the small business owner (myself?) and the like. But that’s not who we want, is it?
Yes, estate is what I mean. I believe it’s still 55% over the deductible of $30M. I have no policy recommendations, because I recognize that I am not knowledgeable enough in such matters.
I am however, worldly enough to understand that when one make more money out of my efforts than I do, then those efforts are inevitably stunted. In short, I’m not a slave to the benefit of others—which I would consider myself to be should you take more than half of my earnings via some sort of tax.
I do not hate wealthy people, as long as their wealth is earned fairly. I would like to see more help to raise the middle class to what it was when I started out. In that manner, close the wealth gap. What we now have is a disparage in wealth distribution approaching feudalism. The top quintile (20%)of the populace own 80% of the wealth in the U.S. Worse, the top 10% own 68% of the wealth—but remember my earlier post regarding that 10%. The rest—including the once vaunted “middle class”—are left to fight over the remaining 20% of the country’s wealth.
We of course then need to discuss a definition of wealth. My perspective is that the problem with wealth in this country is one of bifurcation. The rich got richer—from my life experience—and the middle class stayed about the same, which meant their earnings did not keep up with inflation. The stat’s vary, but I just looked up some metrics wrt wealth. A family needs about $2M to break into the top 10% of the country in wealth. $4M to enter the 95th percentile. It’s the 95th percentile and above I start looking at as wealthy—really the top 1% (IMO).
At the 90th percentile and a bit beyond, given cost of retirement, even $2M seems not unreasonable, nor “greedy”.
Here’s latest from ChatGPT: “…top 1% of U.S. households hold about $55.0 trillion in net worth, or 31.6% of all household wealth”. OK, that’s a lot.
This makes sense. Sometimes there is knowledge/wisdom in common sayings or observations. One saying I’ve always taken to heart is “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations!” If bequeathed wealth is so advantageous, why the adage?
The opposite side of the coin: For myself, my family was anything but wealthy or privileged. None had advanced education, nor worked in White Collar jobs. Yet here I am, a retired college grad (first) with multiple degrees, and with children who are themselves college grads and employed in occupations that provide a higher standard of living than wife and I could ever have imagined in our day.
The only thing wife and I bequeath them was a good genome, what else could we bequeath—we’re not dead yet. 😉
I am not American so I have to be more careful in commenting.I also believe genes are important. However, social networks/connections were mentioned in one of footnotes. Coming from small country, basic life experience tells you this is quite a factor in gaining status. To some extent probably everywhere.
I believe that achieving middle to upper middle class success (not being poor) is very sensitive to personality and intelligence of an individual, but becoming/staying a genuine elite is very much a game of nepotism and family connections.
Having just finished reading your reference above to the British experiment, I can’t help but think of a similar effort—with the same politics involved—in my city. This city is of a half million population, so not small. It had exactly *one* public High School directed to the “gifted” student called “University High School”. This school was consistently ranked in the top ten high schools in America by various rating agencies. Indeed, it was “up the road” from my university. Many of the faculty sent their children to it, rather than a “private” school. So did I.
Things don’t last and neither did this school with its mission, i.e., gifted student education. The population of the city became majority Hispanic and with such, the School Board. Of course, the school board changed the admission criteria such that every “feeder” school in the school district had to accept the top (?) ten percent of the feeder schools’ graduating classes. Of course, the audience reading here will see the fallacy in that mandate concerning “equitable” enrollment vs “merit” enrollment. Within a few short years, University High School dropped in the national ratings to (deserved) obscurity. Specifically from a high of #4 to #92 in 2025. Sigh…
As to your comment and reference above, here is a book I read years back. I’ve tighten the reference via ChatGPT, but yes, I’ve read this book (twice) and vouch for it:
“…
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
Author: Robert Weissberg
First published: 2010, by Transaction Publishers
Length: originally 303 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4128-1345-7
Weissberg was a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, retiring in 2003. The book’s central argument is that persistent poor educational outcomes cannot simply be attributed to defective schools, teachers, funding, or pedagogy. …“
My impression, as I remember, was two fold. One it fits with my impressions taken from classroom experience. Two, it’s loaded with citations to support assertions. In other words, one can use this book as a survey of the literature regarding current and past educational improvement efforts—unfortunately quite dismal (See: Head Start).
Is this an absolute in a time of generous government education grants? Yes, I agree that these grants are not “free” as would be family funding of tuition and saddle the poor unwitting “student” with a significant financial burden by which to begin their societal life. However, many students—most—pay off their debt. Indeed, only 8% are currently in default and of those most have not completed a typical degree such as a Bachelor’s or greater. (I exclude 2yr technical degrees.)
But yes, it certainly is a transfer of wealth to fund your child’s tertiary education.
I have a feeling this evidence will make absolutely no difference to those who simply hate the idea that genes play a large role in life outcomes.
You're probably right.
—NC
'Hold your horses'. It's been a few years since I heard that. I'm so pleased someone much younger than me is keeping such expressions alive.
During WWII many American Japanese families wealth was expropiated and they were placed in concentration camps for the wars duration. By the 1970s they were among the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country. Interestingly those who had been interned had done relatively better than those who had not.
Yes, good point. I covered that in another article:
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/you-cannot-destroy-the-elite
—NC
Great article.
The key is in defining 'success'. Some consider success to be how much wealth you can accrue. Others consider it to be how much useful knowledge you can gain, i.e., value to humanity. I am with Michael Faraday in his quote: “I have always loved science more than money,” he once told a publisher.
I absolutely do not consider avarice as success; it is an abomination
Fair point. I was using "success" in the conventional sense.
—NC
Success—the abstract—definitely! Wealth, the proxy for a good genome, seems a reasonable metric.
" Wealth, the proxy for a good genome, seems a reasonable metric."
The degree of wealth is the determining factor. Enough wealth to support a family is a worthy goal—the obsession with wealth, i.e., avarice, not so much.
I believe the rise in avarice is a significant cause of the downfall of Western Civilization.
We have exchanged before and I respect your thoughtful views.
Let's go with the assumptions that: a) widening wealth inequality is destructive for a reasonably contented and stable society; and b) given "a", some means of preventing or alleviating this inequality is desireable for the benefit of such a society as a whole.
It's at this point where I have had problems. The means to achieve reduced wealth inequality (not eliminate it, but reduce it to some broadly acceptable level, with sunstantial mutual acceptance among all segements of society) seems to be: a) confiscation (taxes) after the acquisition of such wealth; and/or b) external limits on how the wealth is acquired.
To be clear, I'd include annual income as a part of wealth, simply because surplus income every year is a major means for acquisition of asset wealth.
First step would be imposition of an inheritance tax to trim down excessive (the level is arguable, of course) assets from passing from one generation to the next, intact.
Now society has trimmed away generational wealth and its means of acquisition. Next is to prevent excessive wealth acquired during an individual's lifetime. This would be their annual income and their growing base of assets.
We could choose to limit annual income in some fashion. There could be regulation pf maximum salary for any given endeavor. Maximumrate of return for passive income.
Or we could allow the individual to acquire however much he/she wanted per year, but then tax it away from them each year.
Or we could allow them to keep most of their earnings, but have a wealth tax on assets, who would strip away personal value each year.
There may be other policy methods. These methods could be used in combinations, too.
So that's where I've gotten to, and yep, administered as designed (assume fairly and consistently), they would tend to decrease wealth inequality, but gosh, it would create an environment for personal endeavour that I would find oppressive.
What are your views on this?
PS
You'll note that I'm not listing moral education--where society emphasizes that unbridled acqusition is greed, and that greed is greatly reviled across all social/economic strata. I just don't see that as ever being possible in this era. It was possible before--maybe--but not now.
" What are your views on this?"
The problem the super-rich cause for society in general is what they are allowed to do with their money. They can gain control over the populace. Here is one example: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of representative democracy. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976, and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions: First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified the idea that money is free speech, thereby giving entities of wealth and power total influence over elections.
Those are some of the specific problems from vast wealth inequality.
What do you see as workable policies to combat this? Do you think new court decisions, legislation, or...?
"What do you see as workable policies to combat this? Do you think new court decisions, legislation, or...?"
We should eliminate the rich's power to control others' lives. This should happen through both judicial and legislative means.
A quick start would be to eliminate the idiotic concept that money is speech. It is hard to imagine Supreme Court members taking this seriously—but they did.
Money is not evil, but the obsession with it is.
What would you do to eliminate the control of the rich over the lives of others? Said differently, what would you do to eliminate the plutocratic oligarchy we live under?
I’m always interested in discussion and would not normally “butt” in, Realist is a fun read. However, I thought I’d add/reply myself to a small part of your comment if I might. You said,
“First step would be imposition of an inheritance tax”
We already have an inheritance tax. Always had. Perhaps you mean a wealth tax?
As to the current inheritance tax—waay back when, as a young student I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for basically ‘free’ and read that paper daily. They had a yearly analysis rating the wealthiest people in the U.S. In those halcyon days, the most wealthy had “only” a few billion dollars. The dot.com days were still ahead. One of the wealthiest people was Sam Walton of Walmart fame. He was worth $12B or so. A year or so later Bill Gates came on the scene. There were others, but they are not important for this anecdote. Every year I’d open up the WSJ on that day and turn to see who was in the (horse) race to be the wealthiest man alive in the U.S. Was it now Gates? Could Walton keep up? Etc. Walton of course grew in wealth as his store multiplied. Billions and billions…
Then one year, I opened the WSJ only to see that Sam Walton was not even on the first page of the “wealthiest” report, I had to turn the page to see that he was now 8th or 6th or something at $4B. What happened? Well, I read on and suddenly more ‘Waltons’ appeared—two sons and a daughter, all now billionaires. $2-3B each somewhere down to 10-12th place or so of wealthiest individuals. I was a bit taken back, as at that time Reagan folk were attempting to lower the inheritance tax because what was on the books was too onerous and confiscatory and after Reagan managed to get it down to 55%!
So I asked myself, what good is an inheritance tax when the ultra wealthy—like the Waltons have means to escape it? The Walton family is now worth a total of $500B dollars as of 5 minutes ago! (ChatGPT—I no longer read WSJ)
So on to a wealth tax and Bill Gates. Gates made his money in MS and during that period described above reached the $100B mark (IIR). How did he hold onto such wealth? Well, I’m no expert, but he and Melinda started their own charity and began to give of their fortune to it. Of course, they ran the charity, so the billions they gave—tax free—remained under their control. Didn’t seem to hurt Bill either since his current, personal, net worth is estimated by Bloomberg at $107B, and Gates has long been out of the MS business! Diversification don’t you know.
Inheritance tax would seem to be for the “little” guy, which is the reason I’m suspicious of such. By little guy, I mean the rancher, the small business owner (myself?) and the like. But that’s not who we want, is it?
I'd be interested in hearing policy suggestions.
BTW, when I said "inheritance tax" I meant "estate tax". I know there's a federal one that starts at $30M.
Yes, estate is what I mean. I believe it’s still 55% over the deductible of $30M. I have no policy recommendations, because I recognize that I am not knowledgeable enough in such matters.
I am however, worldly enough to understand that when one make more money out of my efforts than I do, then those efforts are inevitably stunted. In short, I’m not a slave to the benefit of others—which I would consider myself to be should you take more than half of my earnings via some sort of tax.
I do not hate wealthy people, as long as their wealth is earned fairly. I would like to see more help to raise the middle class to what it was when I started out. In that manner, close the wealth gap. What we now have is a disparage in wealth distribution approaching feudalism. The top quintile (20%)of the populace own 80% of the wealth in the U.S. Worse, the top 10% own 68% of the wealth—but remember my earlier post regarding that 10%. The rest—including the once vaunted “middle class”—are left to fight over the remaining 20% of the country’s wealth.
I can’t believe this can end well.
We of course then need to discuss a definition of wealth. My perspective is that the problem with wealth in this country is one of bifurcation. The rich got richer—from my life experience—and the middle class stayed about the same, which meant their earnings did not keep up with inflation. The stat’s vary, but I just looked up some metrics wrt wealth. A family needs about $2M to break into the top 10% of the country in wealth. $4M to enter the 95th percentile. It’s the 95th percentile and above I start looking at as wealthy—really the top 1% (IMO).
At the 90th percentile and a bit beyond, given cost of retirement, even $2M seems not unreasonable, nor “greedy”.
Here’s latest from ChatGPT: “…top 1% of U.S. households hold about $55.0 trillion in net worth, or 31.6% of all household wealth”. OK, that’s a lot.
This makes sense. Sometimes there is knowledge/wisdom in common sayings or observations. One saying I’ve always taken to heart is “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations!” If bequeathed wealth is so advantageous, why the adage?
The opposite side of the coin: For myself, my family was anything but wealthy or privileged. None had advanced education, nor worked in White Collar jobs. Yet here I am, a retired college grad (first) with multiple degrees, and with children who are themselves college grads and employed in occupations that provide a higher standard of living than wife and I could ever have imagined in our day.
The only thing wife and I bequeath them was a good genome, what else could we bequeath—we’re not dead yet. 😉
Congrats on the successful family!
—NC
Here is an interesting video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3JHhmDu2Q
I am not American so I have to be more careful in commenting.I also believe genes are important. However, social networks/connections were mentioned in one of footnotes. Coming from small country, basic life experience tells you this is quite a factor in gaining status. To some extent probably everywhere.
It may well be a minor factor, though it's hard to test for.
—NC
I believe that achieving middle to upper middle class success (not being poor) is very sensitive to personality and intelligence of an individual, but becoming/staying a genuine elite is very much a game of nepotism and family connections.
I consider helping pay for schooling to be a
generational transfer of werh.
Going to private school doesn't seem to make such difference either:
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/good-schools-or-good-genes
—NC
Having just finished reading your reference above to the British experiment, I can’t help but think of a similar effort—with the same politics involved—in my city. This city is of a half million population, so not small. It had exactly *one* public High School directed to the “gifted” student called “University High School”. This school was consistently ranked in the top ten high schools in America by various rating agencies. Indeed, it was “up the road” from my university. Many of the faculty sent their children to it, rather than a “private” school. So did I.
Things don’t last and neither did this school with its mission, i.e., gifted student education. The population of the city became majority Hispanic and with such, the School Board. Of course, the school board changed the admission criteria such that every “feeder” school in the school district had to accept the top (?) ten percent of the feeder schools’ graduating classes. Of course, the audience reading here will see the fallacy in that mandate concerning “equitable” enrollment vs “merit” enrollment. Within a few short years, University High School dropped in the national ratings to (deserved) obscurity. Specifically from a high of #4 to #92 in 2025. Sigh…
As to your comment and reference above, here is a book I read years back. I’ve tighten the reference via ChatGPT, but yes, I’ve read this book (twice) and vouch for it:
“…
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
Author: Robert Weissberg
First published: 2010, by Transaction Publishers
Length: originally 303 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4128-1345-7
Weissberg was a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, retiring in 2003. The book’s central argument is that persistent poor educational outcomes cannot simply be attributed to defective schools, teachers, funding, or pedagogy. …“
My impression, as I remember, was two fold. One it fits with my impressions taken from classroom experience. Two, it’s loaded with citations to support assertions. In other words, one can use this book as a survey of the literature regarding current and past educational improvement efforts—unfortunately quite dismal (See: Head Start).
Is this an absolute in a time of generous government education grants? Yes, I agree that these grants are not “free” as would be family funding of tuition and saddle the poor unwitting “student” with a significant financial burden by which to begin their societal life. However, many students—most—pay off their debt. Indeed, only 8% are currently in default and of those most have not completed a typical degree such as a Bachelor’s or greater. (I exclude 2yr technical degrees.)
But yes, it certainly is a transfer of wealth to fund your child’s tertiary education.
I am amused by the credulous assumption that all of the children are necessarily sired by the man whose surname appears on their birth certificate …