I’m of the mind that hereditary wealth should be completely abolished. Debt should be forgiven after a given number of years. Etc. Conservatives and right wingers talk a big game about people earning their own way yet they support passing on of generational wealth to children that in no way earn or deserve it any more than someone born into poverty. I am okay with people earning their own wealth and becoming rich, but I think that their earned wealth should be redistributed to society upon their death—they could choose to donate it to charity if they see fit, but otherwise it would go to funding something like the guaranteed trust you’ve talking about. Goes without saying that this wealth should also be taxed heavily while they’re still alive. And a UBI or negative income tax would be nice as well.
I’d support a trust of 1 million dollars for every person turning eighteen years old. Funding this in the USA would be a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend in other areas. Sure, some would squander it or spend it foolishly, but that happens with many that receive hereditary wealth as well. Trump declared bankruptcy how many times? Six? And I think we would be surprised how many people would channel that money into productive endeavors, either in the form of entrepreneurship or creation of art. That’s how we could actually encourage something like a nation of artisans and independent merchants that some of the American founders envisioned but had no real concept of how to achieve it
I know there's some trends towards endorsing the "die with zero" idea, in terms of hereditary wealth, in publishing, there's evidence of how harmful it can be from hollywood and celebrity wealth already but its informal and I think it pretty much always will be as it would be political sure death to propose such a thing.
The thing is this is all above a certain income bracket and social class that its even a thing, in the UK at the moment the costs associated with retirement and social care, whether they are handled publically by taxation or privately, result in people losing the "earnings of a life time", most people can hope to own a house and that's about it anyway. There are ways to circumnavigate it worked out by accountants but in the main they are shutting that down. So, while old money, old legacies will remain, there will not be new ones.
I do agree with you that the founding fathers and some of the "industrial / productivity" focus free marketeers should be more aligned with this thinking and are not. Interestingly, the reason why the UK never had a national lottery and had restrictions during the eighties on gambling apparently had something to do with Thatcher's own thinking that fortune should be the result of hard work or saving your money and not blind luck.
The thing about squandering Trusts, benefits, whatever is that it still circulates money in the economy, which offshoring it to an panama account does not. That the spend would occur each time the population reached the age of majority should go some way to stabilizing population growth or replacement rates at least, it should also enlist those demographic shifts in ironing out boom and bust cycles in the economy, unless absolutely everyone became spendthrift at once.
With the ability to donate all to charity at the "reset point" though there's ways that old money could create Trusts to maintain legacies, that happens already, a lot of old money families you'll find their kids did "charity" work for a long time on their CV and it turns out the charity was just "an allowance from mom and pop with extra steps".
The only issues I can see would be people deliberately seeking to have a massive family in order to maximise familial wealth, that could be a thing which would need to be managed for somehow. I also think that spendthrift behaviour does circulate money in the economy, unless its the black economy, ie drugs, other sorts of criminal activity, which I dont think there's any correcting for already either.
I dont know how high any trust ought to be, the one in the UK was set up to reflect savings and investments habits of the public owners aswell as state contributions, I thought that was good as it encouraged financial literacy. The market socialists back then had a lot of cool ideas about spreading financial literacy in order that a sort of control of the economy through awareness of private financial control could be created. Though like I say it wasnt widely understood, supported or reported, so people didnt miss any of it once it was gone.
Globalization was weaponized by elites to stop a lot of national experiments like this taking place. It was basically trying to make it plain to everyone that if anyone tried they would move their money someplace it was not happening. Its part of why I think ideas like these have to start small and gain momentum as opposed to be introduced at a stroke or by stealth because they can be eradicated in the exact same way.
On the whole idea of taxes, progressive or otherwise, while I would like to redesign distribution, and I am a socialist, there are types of inequality that I dont mind, including income inequality, provided it does not prove to be anti-social or socially corrosive.
