After reading through quite a bit of material on society, money and power, there has been a gradual thought strengthening itself in my mind.
It is an old issue, consigned to the bin of history for some time now but perhaps is could be revisited, and some of the early difficulties reworked? Immediate issues for farmers and ‘the family home’ arise but these must surely be fixable (is there such a word?).
This is only going to be a short post, with very little argument. It is more to start a topic of discussion and thought that i intend to follow up on irregularly, to see if the thoughts behind the idea can bring it into a logical and coherent argument.
Put basically, we can view my germ of a thought as a comparison of generational money to hereditary title. Those who consider themselves Republicans and who dislike the inequities inherent in a ‘royalty type system’ should look with disdain on generational money because they are arguably the same thing. i’ll leave it at that for the moment.
From a societal point of view it makes sense to allow the accumulation of capital – it helps to reward enterprise, innovation and thrift. However, it is the overall society that has provided the means for the accumulation of that capital, and it is reasonable for society to be rewarded for that. From a slightly different perspective, allowing the transition of capital to a new generation reduces the need for a similar level o enterprise, innovation and thrift.
There are obvious difficulties when dealing with large holdings in major companies and the obvious family farm example. The family home is not taxable in Australia and a Death Tax would in effect impose a tax. This is highly unlikely to be palatable to the bulk of the community but regardless, i want to argue the case through.
Later.
