Is Inheritance Morally Wrong?

I disagree with the enlightenment (for lack of a better word) idea that the basic building block of a society is the individual. A society of solitary individuals is not a society at all. Not any more than solitary bears and tigers can be described as having a society.

The basic building block of society is NOT the individual, but rather the relationships between individuals.

The most basic, and the most powerful, of which is the family.

So when money passes from parents to their children, I don't see it as a transfer of wealth from one person to another, but rather I see it as wealth remaining within the same entity, like how property and copyrights and such remain within a corporation even when there is turnover. It's the same entity. I also completely disagree with the Anglo-American/Protestant idea that as soon as someone is 18, their parents are done with them.

I not only support inheritance and intergenerational wealth transfers, but see them as a moral imperative. When I see parents with means allow their children to take on student loan debt and struggle to make rent, I see parents who are failing in their obligations and who are aborting their potential grandchildren.

I believe that the entire point of building wealth is so that you can give it to your children, to ensure that they lead lives of high quality, and bear you grandchildren. 

My personal backstory is one of lots of financial support from my family. I've never received an inheritance and my parents never straight up gave me money, but they paid for my college and allowed me to live at home rent free for a few years before I got married. This constitutes a very significant wealth transfer, well into the six figures. It also resulted in me being financially ready to have a child long before most of my peers, so I think it will end up being a very good deal for their personal happiness. This is something that I want to do for my kids when the time comes, if not support them even further. 

If you receive in inheritance you have an obligation to take care of it, to keep it healthy and to pass it on when your time comes.

The lazy bum living a lavish lifestyle off the sale of his dads company is acting immorally not because he has an obligation to society to work, but because he has an obligation to his family not to squander what previous generation have earned.

Politically this means I am opposed to an inheritance tax.

so an inheritance tax constitutes an act of double taxation.

I would contend that a person should ABSOLUTELY be able to inherit millions of dollars without the government getting involved at all. Something I don't think most people would agree with. 

I hope this didn't come off as preachy but instead articulated a viewpoint.

I am a rather radical guy on it, if it were up to me the world would be completely fair, I mean as in parenting the same, childhood the same. One world nation pure fair start in life.

That's obviously unrealistic as things are so am I gonna look out for my own if I can post-death? Fuck yes.

I grew up on a farm wondering after the work that my grandfather did to make it what it was. No diggers, rotavators, none of the modern day machinery that I'm accustomed to. There's stone houses all over the farm, still standing, they boggle my mind even looking at them. It's like a monastery up there. Ditches, dikes, perfectly flat fields. A huge expanse of land. He made hay by hand. He cut turf with the slean. No slotted houses, no milking machines, no slurry spreaders. And the place was immaculate until the day he died. My dad brought him a power hose when he was old and not much left in him and we could have buried him with it. He never left it out of his hands. Long way to come from handpumps and shallow wells. He died of farmer's lung. I couldn't put a number on my inheritance.

I don't much know what the moral of that story is, but I think about it a lot. Especially as a programmer these days. I put hours and hours of work into a thing and there's nothing there. I'll leave behind a bank account. 

We are all descended from people and organisms who WON in the competition for resources and mates etc. 

Philosophical discussion about the family vs. individuals

In order to establish "immorality," one would first have to establish an undue deprivation of that to which another has claim. And even if the recipient of an inheritance were to squander his or her wealth, he or she would have the right to do so.

Due to monogamy being normalised,

I don't agree that's an issue. If you're with a person you don't get along with, there's no need to force yourself to live through hell. It's not even better for the children.

My dad told me a story once about the horses. Back when they were workhorses, come winter, my grandfather would bring them down the forest and set them loose, not to be looking after them over winter. Then came spring and he'd go down again and stand at the edge of the forest and give a whistle and they'd come back to work. Doesn't that sound like magic. I would have loved to see it. Reminds me of fucking Gandalf and Shadowfax.