Inheritance tax should be 100%

What if it were impossible to receive wealth from your parents and illegal to give money to your children?

We are all born naked. From that point onwards, paths diverge pretty damn quickly. Some of us are born into an ocean of privilege, which can come in all sorts of shapes, forms, and colors.

As far as demographics go, I am ‘boring’ — I am able-bodied (74%), English-speaking (78%), I have beyond-basic literacy (79%), I’m cis-gendered (99.5%), heterosexual(ish) (96.5%), white (76%), and I finished high school (90%). All of those things come with significant privileges; if I’d fallen into the minority side of those percentages, my life would be significantly harder. I fall into a number of minorities, too. I have a passport (42%) and a college degree (36%). As much as I won the privilege lottery, there’s something that probably out-ranks all of the above in terms of my personal head start: something that has very little to do with who I am or how smart I am: Inter-generational wealth.

The simple fact that my parents could invest in their children has been the most comprehensive advantage I could have had in life. We were never without water, electricity, or food in the fridge. That was just the first layer. I was lucky enough to be an exchange student for a year when I was in high school — a privilege I’ve benefited from in countless ways. When I went to university, after gaining my degree, they could — and did — pay off my student loans. When I was young, my parents' support meant I was able to take unpaid internships which gave me crucial early work experience. I was able to ‘take a risk’ and start companies, in the knowledge that if I were unable to pay my rent, I could go, cap-in-hand to my parents. I was never, truly, at risk of going hungry.

Intergenerational wealth unlocks something even more insidious than privilege: intergenerational privilege.

And here’s the thing: perhaps all of this makes sense until you realize that intergenerational wealth unlocks something even more insidious than privilege: intergenerational privilege. We have people who have privilege not just because they were born with a cabal of trump-cards; their parents were, too. And their parents. And their parents.

The inverse is also true; the lack of privilege is handed down in the same way, and…