On a friend’s Facebook page I left the following comment about the claim of the writer Abi Wilkinson (in the Guardian!) that inheritance should be confiscated by government to fund the UK’s welfare state. What could possibly go wrong?
I wrote:
The hostility to inheritance also comes from a mistaken sense of fairness. As Robert Nozick argued in Anarchy, State and Utopia (I quote from memory), people wrongly think life resembles an athletics race, where the racers compete to hit the finishing line. As a result, those “lucky” athletes endowed by nature/god whatever with stronger muscles etc must be handicapped by having weights in their shoes, for example. Just as a child of rich parents must be deliberately held back to give poor kids a more “fair” chance of winning. But as Nozick said, life isn’t like that. It is about people exchanging goods, services and ideas with one another. There’s no fixed end-point to which we are all racing.
Also, the idea that there is some “prize” that humans compete for implies that someone or some entity has created that “prize” in the first place. But that’s smuggling in a sort of communitarian assumption into the actions of individuals. In an open society, the prizes on offer are varied and multiply constantly.
I should add that the second section of Nozick’s renowned book dissects and ultimately rejects forced redistribution for egalitarian or other forms of “patterned” notions of justice, and he robustly defends what he calls an “entitlement” concept of justice.
One of the approaches that the late Prof. Nozick used was the thought experiment, such as the example referenced above about a fictitious athletics race in which the entrants are hampered/favoured to make the race more “even”, and then assuming that society in general should be like this. A race, held by people who know the rules and seek to abide by them, is not like an open society. “Open” is the key word here: there is no single end to which persons are heading, such as winning the race.
And yet a lot of the metaphors one comes across around discussions around equality, including equality of opportunity as well as outcome, seem to borrow, perhaps unwittingly, from this “race competition” worldview. To give another example, I remember reading some months ago about a university professor (Warwick) who suggested that when parents read stories to their children, this is a form of privilege. This also plays to the idea that life has a fixed end-measure of success, so that anyone giving a value to someone else is giving the latter an unfair “head start” on someone else. It would require a State to exercise totalitarian control of our actions from the moment we wake up to go to sleep lest our actions unfairly advantage/hamper someone in the “race” they are considered, by this worldview, to be on. (It also, by the way, shows that today’s Higher Ed. is full of certifiable fools and worse.)
On a related note, Thomas Sowell is good on this sort of topic. His book, A Conflict Of Visions, is an example.
Johnathan Pearce – as you know, our late friend Anthony Flew wrote the classic refutations of John Rawls and other enemies of the principle of justice (such foes sometimes say they support “Social Justice” rather than justice – but John Rawls did not say that, he used the word “justice” for his injustice) – the works of Anthony Flew such as “The Politics of Procrustes” and “Equality in Liberty and Justice” are well worth remembering.
As for confiscating inheritance – if people can not hand on their farms and other business enterprises to their children then society will be utterly dominated by the government and “partner corporations”. Many things take generations to achieve – a man who plants an oak tree will never see it its prime.
Income is already taxed (it did not use to be – but it is now) so there is no argument for taxing stuff again upon death – especially as corporations do not have natural death and so inheritance tax gives them yet another tax advantage (on top of all their other tax advantages) – sadly the idea that corporations serve ordinary share owners (an idea I used to believe myself) is not correct. Something that William and Edmund Burke noted with the East India Company centuries ago – its decisions did not serve the interests of the ordinary people who supposedly owned it, and the managers of the company knew (yes they knew) that their decisions did not serve the interests of the ordinary people who supposedly owned the East India Company.
If there is to be any hope that inheritance tax falls out of favour it will be because of the simple observable fact that inheritance will be, for many young people, their only hope of ever owning their own property.
If you think that the current government wants young people to own property, I have a bridge etc etc
Peter MacFarlane – correct Sir.
The international agenda is for people to be tenants of governments and partner corporations. And the British state is supportive of that international agenda.
You can clearly see the underlying principle here. Any time money changes hands, the government wants a cut. When my employer pays me, when I buy a pint, when my grandad leaves me his gold watch, there’s the government with a cudgel in one hand and my wallet in the other.
Many things take generations to achieve – a man who plants an oak tree will never see it its prime.
SQOTD candidate.
I’m not sure there’s any point getting too philosophical about this. These are people who want anyone in possession of five quid more than them to have the ‘excess’ removed by force and ‘redistributed’, ideally to them, but not necessarily. It is the removal of it which matters. That’s why they are happy for the state to squander the money it has demanded with menaces. Any reasoning they claim to support this is simply begging the question.
JP,
As to the SQOTD – see the Swedish Navy…
As to this further assault on inheritance. Well, the first one against farmers was deliberate (“Liquidation of the Kulaks” – Stalin) and a (“Cunning Plan” – Baldrick) because it would force farmers out and then we could get mass Econoblocs to factory-farm the migrants who diversify our culture in ways beyond just the gang-rape of kids. But that is what happens when you find a stranger in The Alps.
I never thought I’d ever write anything like that. I’m a classical liberal! But needs must… And I did hold myself back. You don’t wanna hear my internal monologue.
The second phase on inheritance tax is simply because Rach From Complaints is stonier than an honour-killing. She is seriously at the, “Will drop pants for food” stage. It is not a plan – it is desperate measures.
We is buggered. And not just in Rotherham.
By their arguments, everybody must be banned from the inhertance of the learning of prior generations. Newton should have been prevented from knowing what Aritotle wrote, Maxwell should have been prevented from knowing what Newton wrote, Einstein should have been prevented from knowing what Maxwell wrote. Everybopdy must be forced to start from scratch. FOR EQUALITY!