The current “death tax” in the United States allows a person to gift or donate up to $11.18 million tax free. The catch is, of course, that they must die. The Republicans have long made it clear that the “death tax” is a hated foe, but they also like to present a narrative of a free market and almost all Americans love to praise fair competition and equality of opportunity. As such, Americans like inheritance and fair competition. As with many cherished beliefs in belief sets, these two are at odds with each other: allowing significant inheritance conflicts with fair competition and equality of opportunity. While it is easy enough to argue for this point, it makes more sense to make people feel the unfairness inherent to inheritance. This can be done by playing my special variant of Monopoly.
Almost everyone is familiar with Monopoly. For those who are not, the rules can be found here. The gist of the game is that you win by driving all the other players into bankruptcy by using the rules of the game. In normal play, the outcome of one game does not affect the next: the game is an equal opportunity ideal in that everyone starts with the same resources, in the same place and with a chance to win based on ability and luck. My proposed variation adds in inheritance rules. This variation requires playing multiple games.
Monopoly Inheritance!
Rule 1: The first game in the series is played normally using the standard rules.
Rule 2: Upon the conclusion of a game in the series, the winning player records what they possess at the end—money, property, houses, and hotels.
Rule Three: At the start of the second and later games in the series, one player is randomly selected to receive the game possessions of the winning player from the previous game. The receiving player is the heir and the possessions make up their inheritance. The other players start normally. The game is otherwise played using the normal rules, with the exceptions noted in these rules. The series ends when no one wants to play it anymore.
Inheritance Variations
Players can experiment with these variations to make the game more “realistic” or “fairer.” The rules need to be set prior to play.
Fractional Inheritance: The heir receives a percentage of the possessions of the previous winner (75%, 50% or 25% are suggested). Property is selected by drawing the property cards randomly. Round up.
Multiple Heirs: Two players are randomly selected to be heirs, dividing the possessions of the winner of the between them. This can be a 50-50 split or a 75-25 split at the discretion of all the players.
While a player who is not the heir could win the game, the heir obviously has an incredible advantage. Anyone playing by these rules who is not the heir can easily see how unfair the game is. This should help people feel how inheritance of significant wealth is inconsistent with having a fair and competitive economic system.
From a philosophical standpoint, the first game could be considered a state-of-nature game (of the sort envisioned by Locke) in which everything is initially available to all and property has yet to be divided up.
The players in the second (and subsequent) game are obviously taking on the role of the next generation. Since birth is random and inheritance is not merited by effort, the heir is selected at random rather than being the previous winner.
As with any analogy that compares something simple to something vastly more complicated, this analogy will break down quickly. To illustrate, the real-world features multiple heirs, there is no equal start for everyone else, there is not just one game with one winner and so through all the differences. My point is, of course, not that this game variant is a perfect model of inheritance in the United States. Rather, my goal is to get people who are fine with the inheritance system as it stands to play this variant and see if they still feel that this is a fair ruleset for the game. And then to think about whether it is a fair ruleset for the real economy. The question that I want to pose is this: would you play Monopoly by these rules? Why or why not?
As always, I am open to arguments against my view—perhaps allowing and encouraging massive disparities in inheritance is fair and makes for competitive economic system that improves the general welfare.
If I have made my wealth honestly, I have a right and obligation to will it in the way I believe will do the most good. This could be my heirs, or fund NPR, or other things or people, etc. I could choose poorly, but it’s my money honestly earned and I can do with as I think best.
Why? What if you decided to use it to cause harm to other people? Would that be morally fine?
How someone who considers themselves a teacher, let alone a philosopher, yet does not understand what a terribly imbecilic question this is in this context is really quite stunning. And yet at the same time, I’m really not surprised. I’m tempted to ask are you really that obtuse? But of course after ten years…gee, has it really been ten years…I understand what a stupid question that itself is. Bah…some of us never learn…
I think you’re answering the wrong question here. The question is not about the moral considerations of Terence’s choice, but rather, the morality of the government taking it from him, or from his heirs.
The question you are asking can open up a door I’m not sure you want to walk through. We’re talking about inheritance taxes – and you bring up the question of morality. Do we want to consider inheritance tax based on some sort of moral compass? i hope that’s not what you’re getting at.
I think you’re answering the wrong question here.
Mike and his ilk are not interested in answering questions that are put to them. Their ideology has so corrupted their thinking that any attempt to break through the ideological barriers must be met with diversion to topics that they are loaded to discuss. That is until you point out the glaring flaw in that topic and thus they turn it to yet another and another and another such that they have zero responsibility for their ideological failures. Thus do you see the irony in your question?
Let me give you all a little hint as to my frustrations with this Ivory Tower and similar BS. As I believe I’ve referenced here before, over the last 20 years or so in my spare time I volunteer in helping people in various capacities. Sometimes it has been in the schools and sometimes working with those nearing the margins of society. The hardest part of this work is overcoming the BS and lies and deceptions of Mike and his ilk regarding topics such as these. The poisoning that they do to society, how these ideologies undermine the value of vulnerable individuals such that they fail to see the power that they do have over their own lives would not be so terrible were these ideologues willing to engage in (more irony) Socratic method and defend what they believe. But they dodge and obfuscate and use irrelevant truths and other sophistry to tell greater lies to the point that the fairest conclusion I can draw is that they’ve so poisoned their own minds they are no longer capable of thinking clearly. Consistently letting such “thinkers” off the hook with every conceivable excuse is not helping the matter anymore than handing a homeless person $20 will help them. It simply doesn’t work that way.
In closing, let me leave you with a little Socrates (admittedly not my favorite philosopher but occasionally spot-on):
“Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”
The game of Monopoly is in itself patently unfair, and the rules are contrived in such a way as to foster an understanding among laymen of certain archaic progressive economic theories. The original game was called “The Landlord’s Game”, and it was invented by a woman named Lizzie Magie. She herself was a “Georgist”, a follower of Henry George – whose economic theories essentially embraced the idea that people should own the own the fruits of their own labor and creativity, but wealth produced by land should be divided equally among everyone.
The game was designed to demonstrate that rents enriched property owners and impoverished tenants, and that the mere “ownership” of property by one party would have dire consequences on anyone who happened upon that property on a future turn, even if the owner did not happen to be present.
Hence the objective of the game – use your accumulated wealth to crush your opponents and drive everyone into bankruptcy. (Of course, the end of the game does not demonstrate what happens next – with no one to pay rents in that fantasy world, the wealthy landowners will also die impoverished.)
In 1904, when the game was invented, there was some validity to the idea that property owners could and did screw over hapless tenants; crusaders like Magie illustrated important social concepts that led to some just reforms that protected tenants and money-lenders from this kind of usury activity.
Despite a century of reforms, though, the rules of today’s Monopoly game still echo the past – continuing to demonstrate the evils of a monopolistic stronghold on property, leaving no option to the hapless player who should land on Boardwalk with two Hotels but to hand over his cash and leave the game.
The game of Monopoly relies on two completely false premises – one, that wealth is limited (limited to the amount of cash that comes with the set. There is no opportunity to create any additional wealth in the game by pursuing other, more innovative ventures other than being a landlord), and two, that opportunity is limited to 28 separate properties – once the wealth and opportunity are gone, there is no recourse left to the bankrupt player but to leave the game. The amount of money a person has at the beginning is a matter (presumably) of government largess, and the only opportunity to gain more is through the luck of the dice, the draw, or by playing the Landlord Game.
In the real world, of course, if a wealthy developer should buy up the premier properties in Atlantic City (Hey, how convenient – didn’t Donald Trump do that?), anyone living in the city with half a brain and a dash of entrepreneurial spirit would open up a restaurant to capitalize on all the people who come to gamble at the casinos – or start a cab company to shuttle them around, or figure out a way to broker slot machines more cheaply and efficiently than currently available, or contrive of some kind of entertainment for the gamblers to enjoy during the day. Or they can move to a different place and do something else.
So we don’t really need the modified version of Monopoly to illustrate how it “feels” to be playing by unfair rules – they’re already unfair – and already designed to cast a negative light on slanted political and economic precepts. (The difference, of course, as I state later, is that in 1904 the problems were real and the reform was warranted. Today, picking up that crusade with an inheritance tax is just absurd).
Also, and quite sadly, the rules of Monopoly seem to echo a widely held leftist core belief – that there is only so much wealth in the world, and if one person has millions or billions of dollars, that means that someone else is denied that much wealth. The belief seems to be that wealth is like a pizza, with only a limited number of slices to go around – and once they’re gone, no one at the table has a cell phone with which to order another.
The rules of the game also echo yet another false core belief of the left – that capitalism is about one person enriching himself by screwing over other people.
In our last exchange, you complained that the Wegmans were able to thrive in the next generation because they had an unfair advantage, which eliminated their competition. I say that their success not only benefited their employees, their customers, and (through their philanthropy) their city and its residents, but it raised the bar for supermarkets, inspired their competition, and led to an expectation of excellence on the part of consumers that the competition had to meet if they wanted to be successful. They had to figure out how to pay their good employees more if they wanted to keep them – and offer better benefits, lest they go to Wegmans. And they had to do this by figuring out how to offer their groceries with the same high quality and at competitive prices if they wanted to keep market share. And guess what? They did. Wegmans dominates on the East, but then so does Whole Foods – and others, like WalMart, Target, Stop n Shop, Winn Dixie and dozens of others have found ways to compete directly, or by finding a niche market that Wegmans just doesn’t fill.
And if Danny Wegman had an unfair advantage in 1950 over Joe Startup, well if he played his cards right then Joe Startup Jr. would have a leg up in the next generation.
Between 1928 and 1930, the Ford Motor Company produced over 4 million Model A’s, and was able to sell them for between $385 and $1400; based on Ford’s innovations in mass production, this was cheaper and faster than anyone else in the business. Who could compete with that? Clearly Ford had the market cornered, to a grossly unfair advantage against anyone else who wanted to make cars. And when he died, he left a fortune of almost $200 billion to his heirs via direct inheritance, trusts, and business interests. A big chunk of that also went to the government.
So, I guess, so much for making any money in the car business, eh? But wait – what about GM, Chrysler, Cadillac – how could they possibly have made it? I think you get the idea.
And the success of those who chose to compete with Ford spawned more success. Charles F. Kettering, for example, an automotive inventor and pioneer (invented the automatic transmission) and his partner, Alfred P. Sloan, the president and CEO of GM where Kettering worked together amassed quite a fortune themselves … ever hear of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Center and Hospital? Anyone who watches public TV has heard, “This program was made possible in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation”. But wait – Alfred Sloan died in 1966! Didn’t the government get the money? No, he left his fortune to his heirs, who established the foundation and are using it as a constant source of philanthropic contribution to endeavors that the government may not fund because of the political optics.
Same of course is true when George Eastman had a complete monopoly in film and photography. Eastman amassed a fortune equal to that of Ford’s, but he gave it all away. University buildings, hospital wings, theaters, museums – it is difficult to count how many ways in which the world was enriched by Eastman’s monopoly in photography. But wait – did I say “monopoly”? On the film side, who would be so stupid as to compete with Kodak? Certainly not Fuji, or Agfa, or Polaroid … or any of the other manufacturers of film and photographic paper and chemicals. That market was cornered! And on the hardware side – well, Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Olympus, Hasselblad, Rollei, Minox, Pentax … the list is endless. And the result of the competition was excellence – a world of photographic aesthetics and technology that Eastman could never have imagined. (BTW, the inventor of the digital camera, Steven Sasson, was a Kodak employee when he invented it in the 1960’s. Even those who presumably corner the market can make bonehead decisions. Kodak had it in their grasp – and look where they are today!)
(Of course, Eastman, personally, probably agreed more with you than with me. Local anecdotes quote him as saying, “I never wanted children, because I have too much money. If I gave it to them, it’d ruin them – and if I didn’t, they’d hate me!”).
Eastman, however, did realize one strong tenet of a libertarian view of government – and that was that he could do a far, far better job of distributing his wealth himself than the government ever could. And therefore, he gave almost all of it away before he died. There wasn’t enough in his estate to maintain his home as a historic site.
At the risk of waxing political here (or has that ship sailed?) our current president is criticized heavily for not being a “self-made man”. Estimates of his inheritance vary from a mere $40 million to upwards of $300 million. Forget for now what he says about it – I’ll stipulate that everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie – but he did inherit a fortune from his father. So what did he do with it? What came of it? More to the point, what did not come of it?
Well, while it’s not really discussed in polite circles, it is a fact that Trump took this $40 – $300 million advantage and turned it into an empire worth somewhere around $4 billion. He didn’t do that by hanging around lazily flaunting his father’s fortune like Paris Hilton. He invested in hotels, casinos, and resorts, including a whole bunch of high-end golf courses. And in doing so, he was able to eliminate all the competition in those areas because of his inherited advantage, right?
Wait – but what about Hilton? Marriott? Hyatt? The Ritz-Carlton? Holiday Inn? How did they survive? What about Harrahs? What about Sheldon Adelson, the wealthiest casino owner in the country? He was born in the slums of Boston – his father was a cab driver and his mother sold knitting supplies. Trump had all the advantages, all the money, all the power behind him – and yet Adelson was able to compete and now boasts a net worth of over $32 billion – eight times what Trump is worth, and in the same business. Of course, there’s also the Wynn family and Kirk Kekorian – who illustrates my point very well. Kekorian saw the trends in Las Vegas with all these wealthy casino owners cornering the market – so what did he do? He used his own skills and abilities and made a small fortune flying the high-rollers around in his private plane. Once he had made enough money doing that, he began investing in casino properties despite the overwhelming odds against him and the cornering of the market by others – including the Mafia – and is now one of the wealthiest casino owners in the world.
And as successful as Trump is in the golf resort business, he’s really quite a small player there.
The point is that in Monopoly, property ownership and wealth is designed to crush the competition; in the real world it fosters excellence, raises the bar, and spawns new ideas and new businesses that create more wealth, employ more people, generate more tax dollars, and reduce dependence on the government.
Opportunity in this world is not limited to 28 squares on a board, and wealth is not limited to the amount of money that comes in a box. Your analogy does not, as you say, “break down quickly”, it never gets off the ground.
The vision of the economic world you seek to demonstrate is not unlike the original vision of “The Landlord’s game”, with one small but important difference. Lizzie Magie was crusading against true injustice in a world that really did crush competition and exploit the poor. But over the decades, that situation no longer exists. Laws have changed, and opportunities today abound regardless of who has how much money already, or who inherits what.
This world puts far, far more stock in innovation, ideation, hard work and enterprise than it does in inheritance. The TV show “Shark Tank” is an entertainment show, but it illustrates how hungry investors are for ideas that have merit, and how willing they are to put money into those ideas. The money is the easy part. What’s the saying? “Invent a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”.
Your perception simply has no basis in reality.
To illustrate that point just one more time – it is reported in Forbes magazine, Money magazine, and several other notable sources that 70% of the wealth of millionaires, inherited by their heirs, is gone by the second generation. A full 90% is gone by the third. So while these heirs may have an economic advantage over their competition, they clearly have no idea what to do with it. Statistics show that it takes a beneficiary an average of 19 days to buy a new car. Now that’s savvy investing!
So here’s the cruel irony –
The heirs of millionaires, with no economic sense whatsoever, blow the family fortune. How? Cars. Homes. Vacations. Yachts. Jets. Failed business ventures. Bad investments. Ignorance of tax law.
That in itself is pure, unadulterated, demand-side Keynesian economics. Put the money in the hands of those who will spend it, and by spending it they will create demand and infuse the economy with capital and keep it healthy.
And what of the paltry few who actually do something with the money? Well, that’s the supply side, i guess. They build businesses, create wealth, spend more money, employ more people who also spend more money, create broader tax bases and infuse the economy with capital and keep it healthy.
The only really bad thing you can do with an inheritance is tax it in order to redistribute it according to some politically correct government principle – because it will get distributed not to those who need it most, but to whatever group provides the best optics that will lead to re-election. Now that’s a waste. That’s about the epitome of “unfair”.
I salute you, DH. I had read this, and was having trouble finding a response that took the metaphor seriously. Your post is amazing!
Monopoly is a game that continues until someone wins, at which point the positions of all other players are hopeless or impossible. One might as well ask whether a version of Chess or Go in which subsequent players inherited the winning and lost positions could be “fair”. Nothing regarding inheritance in normal life is remotely lke that.
Thanks, Coffee Time. I appreciate the acknowledgement.
True, the analogy does break hard. But, I could make the same point with almost any game: would you consider it a fair game to play if some of the players started off with a massive advantage over the other players?
You’re now illustrating another tenet of leftist philosophy – maybe the most unfortunate one of all – envy.
What one person might call an advantage, another might not – and it’s not always (and maybe even rarely) money. Money is a tool, a means to an end, but if you get caught up in envying those who have it, thinking they are better off than you, or have all the advantages, well, you’re in for a pretty miserable life.
Of course, Monopoly and other games aren’t set up to acknowledge that – which is why I don’t think the analogy works. The rules of Monopoly, as with the rules of any game, have a very specific definition of “winning”. Is that the way it is in life, by your definition? The one with the most money wins?
What would you do, personally, if you inherited a fortune? Would you use that advantage to crush other people? Would you open up a store and drive others out of business? Or would you maybe donate a big chunk of it for the “LaBossiere Center for Progressive Thought and Critical Thinking (Assuming It Exists)” at FAMU? And what would be your purpose in making that donation – to drive other universities out of business?
You would not play poker with me if I had thousands of dollars in chips and you only had a few hundred, would you? But John Cynn might (US poker champ 2018). Most people would see that having all that money would be the advantage there – but Cynn has a different kind of advantage.
The idea of the free market is that anyone can succeed – and that success is based on a multitude of “winning scenarios” of which money is merely one of them. I’ve said before that “winning” for me is not about amassing a fortune, and even though I scratch my head each month and worry about bills and retirement, I feel as though I have won – how could that possibly be?
Inheritance is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end – and people can use it to retire and treat themselves to a lavish lifestyle, they can use it to build something great, they can use it to crush their competition or they can blow it on big parties, drugs, loose women and gambling.
Probably what is more important is how inheritance defines us as a nation, as it pertains to the levels to which we expect government to be a part of our lives. Do we expect government to leave us alone, as long as we commit no crime and harm no others? Do we expect government to respect our rights to private property, despite the possibility that one person might have more private property than another? Or do we expect government to act as a doting parent, trying to make the world “fair” for others?
What do you think? Imagine you have two children, and one of them is given a new toy by a friend. The other begins to cry – very jealous of his sister’s newfound wealth. What do you do?
There are some parents who would take the toy away – make things even and “fair” again for the children. Others would go out and buy a toy for the second child – again, trying to even things up.
But it’s a teaching moment that goes beyond all that. And those who get that lesson – you can read about them every day. Just Google “Rags to Riches” and read about the thousands, even millions of people who started with nothing, overcame obstacles, ignored what other people had, and found their own success.
Envy is a terrible thing, and will destroy you completely. It’s cautioned against in the Ten Commandments, it’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Koran calls it a “disease of the soul”.
So fortunately, I don’t live in a world of games, I live in the real world – so if I see that someone has a massive advantage to the point that I don’t think I have any chance of competing – I can play a different game. I pity those who cannot see that.