You will inherit nothing for the good of “meritocracy” and “free markets”

Robert Stark

Apr 18, 2024

Source: @ChrisUnits on X

Proponents of abolishing inheritance include many leftists, from French socialist economist, Thomas Piketty, to the Jacobin’s Ben Burgis, on standard wealth redistributionist or equity grounds. Basically, that privilege is bad so we must eliminate all privilege. There are also concerns about racial inequities in inheritance, such as arguments that repealing the estate tax disproportionately benefits Whites, and even calls for a 100% tax on White people’s inheritance. The woke Left believes that White intergenerational wealth is a product of past racial oppression.

This call to abolish inheritance is not exclusive to socialists, but very much fits in with a kind of liberal capitalism or neoliberalism. For instance, an article in the oligarch shilling, Economist, makes the case that abolishing inheritance is not Marxist but rather in line with America’s Founding Fathers. Libertarian, Megan McArdle, makes a libertarian case against inheritance, on the grounds that the dead do not have rights, which is actually very Maoist or Year Zero.

Source: @PhilWalkable on X

A post on X by a YIMBY property investor on abolishing inheritance perfectly encapsulates this radically egalitarian capitalist philosophy. Basically, since people can’t choose or earn who their parents or ancestors are, the only right thing is for them to have to strive to prove their worth and earn their own wealth. It treats everyone as an atomized individual and every generation as a blank slate with no connection to either the past or future. However, as a property investor, this person does not necessarily want the State to come in and socialize his assets and profits, but rather put the burden on his descendants, if he even has any.

Another X commenter of a similar ilk, added that ”Businesses would be a lot more competitive and profitable with a 100% estate tax. Kicks out the dead weight,” and that  “Do we really need an aristocracy tho? The founding fathers fought a war to kick that old money outta here.” The pro-business stance and implying that inheritance is Aristocracy meets welfarism, just further shows a neoliberal capitalist rather than a socialist slant.

source: @Blair_A_Nathan on X

The influences of this ideology range from Classical Liberalism and the Protestant work ethic to more radical leftwing ideas, such as woke CRT. It combines a radical hyper-principled egalitarianism or leftist “year zero” mentality about how the World ought to be justly ordered with a sort of Social Darwinism, the worst of both worlds. However, Darwinism at least implies favoring your genetic offspring to succeed. Regardless, it is an obsession with having a totally fair system but also that everyone must be constantly striving on the hamster wheel.

Source: @SamoBurja on X

It is the worst combo of equity leftism with bootstraps conservatism, which is in many ways worse than pure leftism or socialism. It is a revisionist ideology that was formed in the late 20^th Century, fusing Martin Luther King with Ronald Reagan, even though those figures were initially at odds with each other. Libertarianism/Reaganism/neoliberalism/meritocracy worship and Marxism/socialism, as ideological descendants of liberalism, actually have much more in common with each other than their proponents would like to admit. However, even in the Soviet Union, you could pass on some inheritance without it being confiscated by the State.

A lot of this “abolish inheritance” rhetoric is coming from upper middle class White guys, either boomers or Gen X, who are looking for ways to detract from scrutiny over their privilege and to justify their success as meritocratic. The anti-inheritance stance also appeals to a segment of successful immigrant strivers who resent paying income taxes while viewing Whites with inheritance as freeloaders. Overall, it is a reaction to elite overproduction.

Source: lost_nomad on X

Ultra-wealthy celebrities like Mick Jagger or billionaires like Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, say they won’t leave any inheritance to their children. It is a need to justify their success to the masses but also a product of hyper-individualistic values. This also relates to the rich concealing their wealth with ugly or bland aesthetics, like Big Tech headquarters in banal low-slung office parks or Mark Zuckerberg wearing a hoody.

Oligarchs can live with abolishing inheritance, as long as their offspring still have the right connections and access to easy capital via the rigged financial system. They would also find ways to get around it like creating fake charities or secretly giving their grandkids gold coins. If anything, scrapping inheritance would screw over the downwardly mobile White middle class,  and some factions of old money, while benefiting the new money managerial class and granting greater legitimacy to the oligarchy. Advocating an inheritance tax of 100% is a declaration of war against a generation of White millennials. Especially those who are financially worse off than their parents due to student loans and the cost of living.

Source: @MrFamilyOffice on X

Even though the American system is not true capitalism or meritocracy, there is still an engrained slave morality or noble lie that those at the top deserve their wealth and position, as well as a commodification of everyone and everything based on economic output. While many people are surprised that the wealthiest work fewer hours than the working class, it is idiotic to assume that the amount of time worked equals productivity, innovation, or genius. However, the wealthy feel a need to justify their existence as hard workers, who are just like working class schlubs.

Conservatives don’t have an adequate response to the ultra-wealthy being more liberal and will justify liberal billionaires being allowed to hold onto their wealth because they earned it under capitalism. For instance, saying that even though Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are woke, they admire their entrepreneurship. It is a good thing that self-made billionaires are declining, with Forbes under 30 now all being Nepo babies. It is better for people to realize that the system is rigged than to dream about becoming the next Musk or Zuck.

American culture fetishizes the self-made entrepreneur or striver but despises the spoiled heirs and Nepo babies. Opposition to nepotism is based upon a principle of fairness but Americans tolerate obscene levels of inequality if the oligarchs can convince people that they’ve earned it fairly. Abolishing inheritance also incentivizes endless hard work with no leisure, which is necessary for creating culture, innovation, and making crucial civilizational decisions.

Source: @Mochak92 on X

The self-made wealthy, especially those who climb the corporate ladder, are in ways worse than heirs because they had to tailor and micromanage their actions and entire lives to the values of managerial elite institutions and have no connection to the past, as old money does. This explains why America’s elite are significantly worse than Europe’s elite. Also, a landed gentry is attached to the land, while Silicon Valley or financial elites are not attached to anything tangible.

Source: @morris_que14 on X

The essence of liberal capitalism is to use markets to carry out liberal egalitarian aims. While capitalism is a force for liberalization, as far as breaking down national and cultural barriers and social cohesion, it exacerbates inequality. Normie conservatives actually believe that racial inequality can be ended by free market capitalism. For instance, conservatives argue for school vouchers using egalitarian or integrationist arguments. However, the main purpose of private schools is to pay for access to the right class or demographic and to exclude others.

Source: @Black_Pilled on X

Inequality is inherent and there is no such thing as a free market because those with the money and power can and will rig the rules in their favor. If one accepts Blank Slatism, then the only two options are to tell people to pull themselves up from their bootstraps or to enforce equity programs, both of which are terrible. Capitalism needs an egalitarian liberal framework to justify itself and mask that the true nature of power is illiberal.

Source: @NRO on X

People are ignorant of how much external factors determine their life outcomes and the limitations of self-improvement and hard work. While there are countless examples of mediocre “Nepo Babies,” the concept revolves around the refusal to acknowledge any inherited talent. Conservatives, or rather right-liberals, reject equal outcomes while calling for equal opportunity, which is just as impractically idealistic and coercive to enforce. Conservatives set themselves up for this by their allergy to biological thinking, while placing high moral value upon personal success.

Source: @TonidosBosques on X

Any Blank Slate ideology will inevitably lead to scapegoating against Whites for the lower average life outcomes of certain Nonwhite demographics. Whites have privilege so they are not allowed to complain about bad economic or social conditions. If Whites have a problem with mass immigration, the response is why don’t you just compete better, work harder, and get better educated. Whites who can’t compete are bitter losers while Whites are also bigots for putting up any barriers to competition. Whether it is left behind rural Whites embracing nationalism and populism or upper class Whites gatekeeping new immigrant strivers, such as privileged White students on University legacy admissions.

Source: @EpektasisJohn on X

There is a neoliberal centrist type who worships Asian American success while deriding Blacks for their racial resentment but also Whites for clinging to their birthright. However, it is primarily about a moral victory to prove that the American meritocracy works. The neoliberal view is that immigrants are better Americans because they live up to the American ideal of hard work and grind while it is irrelevant who has actually lived here the longest.

Source: @Noahpinion on X

A very Anglo middle class obsession with fairness gets exploited by both corrupt elites and more nepotistic immigrants. Discrimination as gatekeeping and protectionism against competition is the greatest evil under liberalism, which is actually a healthy instinct in times of scarcity. While elite nepotism is a problem, meritocracy is insane on a global scale or even under massive centralized managerial institutions, and only really works on a smaller scale. The Platonic ideal of meritocracy as identifying and nurturing talent has evolved into nothing but crass credentialism, with American innovation stagnating.

Source: @Rob02909237 on X

Certainly abolishing inheritance would disincentivize savings and encourage the elderly to splurge on things like cruises and dining out. Also, most of this confiscated wealth would just go directly to the State apparatus. Not to mention that abolishing inheritance could have a dysgenic effect of incentivizing the upper middle class to have fewer kids.

Source: @Arbor_Bench on X

There is this neoliberal view that saving/thrift is bad for markets and everyone must be spending to generate economic growth. Abolishing inheritance fits in with the Great Reset agenda of a central bank digital currency, that does not allow people to save, and where people can only rent but not own. Without being able to build up savings and inter-generational wealth, people are serfs and slaves to institutions, like corporations and bureaucracies.

Source: @ cornu__copia on X

The highest inheritance taxation rates by nation, are in Belgium, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, the UK, and the United States, while there is no inheritance tax in Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Canada, Austria, Australia, Russia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Singapore, Israel, Mexico, India, Pakistan and surprisingly China. The irony is that Japan and South Korea are thought of as hyper-capitalist while Sweden is Social Democratic. Sweden and other European nations have an arrangement that preserves dynastic wealth in exchange for a generous social safety net while stifling new money strivers. In contrast, a lot of neoliberals want higher inheritance and property taxation in exchange for lower income and corporate taxes.

This “no one owes you anything” mentality is not traditionalism but rather a product of classical liberal or Enlightenment thinking. Feeling entitled is a good thing and the old feudalist system of guilds and titles was based on certain people being entitled to certain things, even if it was just peasants being entitled to till the land. The same mentality applies to marriage, as in the past everyone got married while today it is something to strive for or to be earned.

Source: @lost_nomad on X

This is the same mentality behind White middle class parents kicking their kids out of the house when they turn 18, and why ethnics and old money Whites succeed, because they treat their offspring as an extension of themselves. Passing down a birthright to one’s descendants is noble while having no connection to one’s ancestors or descendants is utterly nihilistic. Since the essence of biology is the will to go on, this mentality is fundamentally anti-human and anti-biology. Taking care of your own is the strongest and most wholesome instinct one has. It is spiritual warfare in denying the eternal or long-lasting, and the same mentality behind replacement migration.

Source: @HughdeCroft on X

The principle of equality, via the chance to become “affluent for all,” is the basis for the American system’s legitimacy. Atomization with a selling point of unlimited social mobility has replaced fixed inborn hierarchies. However, merit is not everything and duty, loyalty, and identity are just as important. This model takes a rigorous process and lots of signaling to maintain, in an almost religious sense. It can’t just be laissez-faire or be a materialist ideology.

There is a new system that says to succeed you have to be in line with the State ideology, a more overt kleptocracy of rewarding loyalty to the system. This ironically erodes the soft power of meritocracy and the legitimacy of the system. While there are potential downsides to returning to a quasi-feudalist system of dynasties, hereditary titles, patronage networks, and restrictions on movement, the key is finding the right balance. It is possible to restore identity, rootedness, and social capital, without greatly stifling innovation and economic prosperity.