Generation Identity USA

Dear World,

I am fundamentally a hybrid capitalist: I believe in markets, private enterprise, innovation, and the right of people to benefit from their productivity. But I also believe we should be careful about treating the perpetual transfer and accumulation of wealth, property, and economic power from one generation to the next as an unquestionable good.

At some point, inherited wealth can become less like an earned reward and more like Midas hoarding all the world’s gold. It can create a society increasingly predicated on the fortune of birth rather than productivity, merit, morality, or even good intentions.
That concentration of inherited wealth has become a destructive force in our established and evolving society; it doesn't merely preserve money—it preserves power. As wealth becomes sufficiently concentrated, it begins to purchase access, influence, and privilege for its recipients—and for them alone. And often, too often, it provides the ability to bend institutions that are supposed to operate independently of those forces.
One need only look around with an honest and critical eye, informed by the lessons of history and the realities of current events, to see that even institutions entrusted with administering justice are not immune to the influence of money and power. When wealth can buy access and influence, we have moved beyond the healthy rewards of capitalism and toward an entrenched hierarchy of power.
So while I support making it easier for seniors to make reasonable housing decisions, I think we should also ask a larger question:

How do we preserve the legitimate rewards of ownership and productivity without allowing inherited wealth to become a permanent mechanism for reproducing class and power from one generation to the next?

I await the world's response or not.

Send a message to learn more