Erben wird fast genauso wichtig wie zu arbeiten
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/27/inheriting-is-becoming-nearly-as-important-as-working
Von Ok_Plankton_5714
Erben wird fast genauso wichtig wie zu arbeiten
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/27/inheriting-is-becoming-nearly-as-important-as-working
Von Ok_Plankton_5714
40 Kommentare
Nearly?
I would say more important. Can’t buy a house with my salary alone. Can only buy a house when I inherit sufficient money. Its separating the population, widening the gap in lifestyle even between those who earn the same.
It was always more important if your family is rich enough
Question: What is the point of working hard, if the only way to succeed in life is to have rich parents?
Because this is starting to sound like a game where you only win if you refuse to play.
In Portugal it already is.
If you inherit just 1 house in the suburbs of Lisbon you can rent it for 1k easily.
If you have just completed highschool, you can get a job that pays a little over 1k net.
You’d be bringing in around 2k net per month. For context, tha’s way more than 99% of jobs that require higher education can pay in this country. For example, a high school teacher would only make a little more than that at the very end of their career (some never get there).
Remember arguing at age 17 with a schoolmate pretending to want to rebel against capitalistic society and living frugal that they would inherit millions before age 30 and quickly forget about what they told me.
Fast forward 25 years. 3 million € house was indeed inherited around age 30. Only thing daddy wanted was a grandson. That particular guy is still working a NGO job with plenty of social capital and minimal salary (60%, because one just has one life right?)
I know people actually practicing what is often considered the highest paid profession. And still, inheritance is playing a larger a larger role.
ZIRP and asset inflation is the reason…
I foresee a quick return to Feudalism with balls, fancy dances and horseback hunting. Work will soon again play little role in ones social success.
„Nearly“?
In the UK, I have friends who earn far less than me but grandparents left them a property or money to buy a property when they were in their twenties. They are now mortgage free owners of a family home.
If I work and earn more than them for the rest of my life, I still probably won’t end up as financially secure as they are, because I will have had to rent for a decade or more and then paid a mortgage for 20 years or more in the meantime.
My inheriting from my great-grandfather was stolen by russian „dekulakization“… and my current achievements were destroyed by them as well…
Inheritance is far more important than working.
>As a share of output, annual inheritance flows have doubled in France since the 1960s, and nearly trebled in Germany since the 1970s
Oh wow, the generation that’s inheriting from the one that experienced the birth of the modern middle class is making more than the one who inherited from their farmer parents.
The massive issue is that wages between the 60/70s and today didn’t increase anywhere nearly as they did for the previous 60 years. That’s the part of the circle that’s broken.
But we aren’t going to acknowledge that, workers will be given yet another scapegoat to hate for their condition, workers themselves because of course they’ll find some excuse to keep the rich out of this and blame it all on the random bloke who inherited the house he grew up in and his parents savings set aside when the average Joe could still save a decent amount of money.
Becoming? It always has been.
The only time I really expect me to have enough money to get a house is when my parents die…
Are you sure about that?
This only applies to the upper class. How much is inheritance tax in EU countries?
As far as I can see, the lower classes don’t benefit much from inheritance, when the state takes a good part of it away from them through taxes.
PS.I started from this.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inheritance_tax_rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inheritance_tax_rates)
Nearly??? I know people who make minimum wage but inherited an apartment and with that they live better than a person with a good salary who has to have a mortgage (IF they qualify for it first…)
I should’ve studied inheritance at uni
It also causes problems for childbirth.
If you don’t afford family sized living near schools/daycare/work, you don’t afford children.You can’t make it work if you spend 8+ hours working, then 4 hours commuting.
You will focus on career instead. A great percentage will not reach their goals before becoming infertile. That kills societies.
edit: or before they get their inheritance.
I am already more wealthy than my parents at the ripe old age of 39. Inherit what again?
My dad told me that he and a lot of his generation are giving retirement savings the finger and having fun in their 50s while they can. I don’t blame him and I dont expect a bent nickle from him when hes gone, but I think a lot of my (millenial) generation is going to (once again) not see a big benefit that previous generations saw.
In France 60% of the asset are inherited. Inheriting is what determine your financial asset but also, most of the time, being born in a rich family allow you to have better education and better jobs with higher salary.
In reality nothing is fair in life : health, intelligence, appearance are also mostly luck at birth.
Always has been.
It’s extremely important and I would argue that it has been growing importance for at least 25 years or my whole career. My wife and I are of middle middle class roots and won’t see much, but we made up for it by climbing much higher. We will be working to leave more for our daughter because speaking facts it’s just not optional anymore.
„Arbeit muss sich wieder lohnen“ (= „work must pay off again“)
… usually something heard from neoliberals who want lower taxes… Funny how this could also be read differently in this context: „why bother? there is no social mobility anyway…“
Hasn’t it always been the case?
This is what happens when asset price, specifically land price inflates.
Your wage can’t keep up with cheap money speculating on land.
This has been the case in Germany for a long time. Inequality has been growing again since the post-war boom. Almost all of the wealthiest people in Germany belong to old money families that often have been rich since the Kaiserreich. It’s very hard to break through the ceiling that is placed upon a hard working German. Taxes are very high for the most productive (in terms of monetary value created) working people and very low for people who live off inheritance or asset income, loopholes even allow the richest people to get off the hook with minimal tax expenses.
It already is more important by far. At least in France if you hit the jackpot of getting an appartment in Paris you save so much money if you live in it or you make so much if you rent it or sell it.
Fuck you mean ‘becoming’?
People forget how the world works?
Ah we’re back to that. Just a gently reminder of how things have turned out in the past when the wealth is accumulated to a small number of people.
The entire system is broken.
Working is greatly overrated for building wealth
Yep, I’ve a decent paying job, save & invest, but most of my wealth will come when my parents and my partners parents die and we sell their houses, we need to move to a model of taxing wealth (through LVT or equivalent, direct inheritance tax has too many loopholes) and reducing how much we tax labour, reward people for working and producing value, not for how much land they can collect
Becoming?
It has always been more important. You need to be in the 0.01% for working to pay off compared to inheriting.
This was what Thomas Piketty was pointing out – capital now has a higher return than labour.
Nearly?
I’m 35 working in a good industry since 21. I will likely never afford to buy a 3 bedroom house.
Inheritance has always been MORE important than working. You can work all you want, in your lifetime (excluding utter luck on your side and absolute stupidity on their side – So basically a normal life) you will be unable to achieve anthing a person is able to achieve that headstarts with a 100k $ at the age of 18 because the parents inherited. Inheritance is similar to the process of compound interest. Even if the parents do not directly give the money to the 18yo, but spend it in his interest, you will not be able to catch that person EVER, even if you are the most dedicated student with incredible, but still normal, learning talents. Thats hoe fucked up inheritance and compound mechanisms are.
This isn’t good for the economy and speaks Ill of leadership.
What can go wrong when productivity and actually creating stuff doesn’t hold value but borrowing from future self does
„is becoming“. It’s always been
In Spain it has been *more* important for at least a decade. And I’m not talking about extreme cases of the super-rich.
Concrete case in my circles (and this is just an example, there are many more):
Friend 1 – civil engineer, with a highly qualified job, and a salary in line with what you can get in Spain from such a job. Parent’s don’t have more houses than their own and can’t help him buy one.
Friend 2 – no studies, wasn’t good at school or especially hard-working. Sometimes works on things like pizza delivery, betting venues, waitress, etc. Sometimes unemployed. Her family is not rich or anything, but they have an extra flat in the city – old, but in a relatively good location and you can live in it.
Friend 2 has much better quality of life than friend 1. Can afford going out, restaurants, etc. much more often than friend 1 (who even didn’t have a kid for economic reasons). And this is not attributable to any bad economic decisions from friend 1 or vice versa. It’s just that with current housing prices, having a place to live without paying rent or mortgage is *everything*.