Every country, with only a few exceptions, has been doing this since WW2, US and Europe longer. So the benefits have been going strong for 75 years and counting now. 200 to 1000 years and counting in various parts of Europe.
> The long term outcome is a new class division (asset inheritors versus pure wage earners with no inheritance)
Indeed. Unfortunately that means about the opposite of what you think it does. Even you agree that there's a new class. Before this system started inheritance was absolutely the only way to wealth.
If this system goes wrong the outcome will be that inheritance is the only way to wealth.
Right now that isn't the case (well, it is in Europe, but in the US most of the uber-wealthy come from ... well half of them were refugees as kids. There is generational wealth in America but nothing like there is in most of the world. Even in Europe there's like 10% who only found wealth after WW2. And 90% who had wealth before WW2 and managed to keep it with the Nazis in power and, frankly, there's only one way that happened (and most of the European commission members come from that 90%, as do most country governments, so good luck changing that). Still, you want to argue that this is better than what came before? That's easy)
I was referring to the relatively newer situation where house prices have outrun wages, which is more of a 21st century phenomenon in Australia. The capital gains tax discount introduced in the early 2000s largely contributed to this, and housing became a government supported avenue for lazy and secure investment. It has resulted in a wealth transfer from the young to the old, or to the offspring of investment property owning families. When you couple that with the worst renter protection laws in the western world, and very high rent growth, it has become a destroyer of social mobility that once existed in this country.
Every country, with only a few exceptions, has been doing this since WW2, US and Europe longer. So the benefits have been going strong for 75 years and counting now. 200 to 1000 years and counting in various parts of Europe.
> The long term outcome is a new class division (asset inheritors versus pure wage earners with no inheritance)
Indeed. Unfortunately that means about the opposite of what you think it does. Even you agree that there's a new class. Before this system started inheritance was absolutely the only way to wealth.
If this system goes wrong the outcome will be that inheritance is the only way to wealth.
Right now that isn't the case (well, it is in Europe, but in the US most of the uber-wealthy come from ... well half of them were refugees as kids. There is generational wealth in America but nothing like there is in most of the world. Even in Europe there's like 10% who only found wealth after WW2. And 90% who had wealth before WW2 and managed to keep it with the Nazis in power and, frankly, there's only one way that happened (and most of the European commission members come from that 90%, as do most country governments, so good luck changing that). Still, you want to argue that this is better than what came before? That's easy)
So great success!