Inherited advantage decides outcomes before anyone has done anything

The argument

Proponents of minimising inheritance begin from a claim about desert. Whatever is said in favour of rewarding effort, risk or talent, none of it applies to a transfer the recipient did nothing to bring about. An inheritance arrives on the basis of who someone's parents were, and that is the one circumstance a person has no part in choosing. On this account inherited wealth is the clearest case there is of an advantage that cannot be justified by anything its holder has done. The argument then turns to what the advantage does. Proponents argue that a bequest does not simply make its recipient richer at the moment it lands; it shapes everything that came before. Families who expect to pass wealth on spend differently while they are alive, on housing in particular areas, on tutoring and schooling, on the freedom to take an unpaid opportunity or absorb a failed venture, and on the security that makes risk reasonable in the first place. The inheritance is the last instalment of a long advantage, and its effect is to carry the results of one generation's position into the starting conditions of the next. From there the conclusion follows. If the aim is that people should rise or fall by what they do, then the largest single determinant of where they start cannot be left untouched, because its compounding is what converts one generation's good fortune into a permanent difference in life chances. Minimising inheritance is presented not as a penalty on the family that accumulated the wealth but as a condition of the competition being about effort at all. Proponents accept that no policy equalises starting points entirely, and argue that this is a reason to narrow the gap where it is visible and assessable rather than to leave it alone.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the argument misidentifies whose action is in question. A bequest is not a windfall from nowhere but a decision by the person who earned the wealth, and if their effort and saving are theirs, so is the choice of what to do with the proceeds, including the choice to provide for their children. They add that the desert argument reaches far beyond money, since parents pass on language, attention, values, contacts and expectations, all unchosen by the child and none of them taxable. On that view singling out the transferable part of a family's advantage will not equalise starting positions and will chiefly change the form in which the advantage is passed on.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The transfer is chosen by the person who earned the wealth, so the argument has to address their claim to dispose of it rather than only the recipient's lack of desert. [Rejecting P2] If an expected inheritance works mainly through upbringing, housing and schooling, then a charge on the bequest arrives after the advantage has been conferred and does not reach it. [Rejecting P3] The largest determinants of where people start are unchosen advantages that cannot be transferred or assessed at all, so removing the taxable part leaves the compounding largely intact. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that inherited advantage is unearned, not that minimising inheritance is the way to make starting points more equal.