The wealthy increasingly oppose inherited wealth. Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, won’t pass her fortune on to her children. Television personality Simon Cowell wants to leave his wealth to a charity for “kids and dogs” rather than to his son. Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn turned much of her inheritance over to a “representative sample of Austria’s population” to disburse as they saw fit. When Mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected, Alex Soros—son to George Soros and heir to his fortune—posted a photo with Mamdani. It’s a powerfully ironic image: the scion of immense wealth literally embracing someone who wants to seize his fortune.
It’s not just the ultra-wealthy who are against inheritance, though. Fifty-one percent of Gen Zers support an increased inheritance tax “to combat economic inequality,” a higher percentage than any other generation. Politicians in the United States and Europe have adopted the same mindset, imposing massive inheritance and estate taxes to penalize intergenerational wealth transfers. Twelve U.S. states and the District of Columbia now levy their own estate taxes atop the federal tax. The United Kingdom last year passed a law expanding the number of families subject to its inheritance tax.
This cultural and political opposition to inheritance may be increasingly popular, but it is poisonous. Inheritance is how societies compound the achievements of past generations, preserving productive enterprises and building wealth over time. Anti-legacy sentiment risks undermining entrepreneurship, institutional continuity, and the mechanisms historically associated with long-term prosperity.
Consider how central inheritance is to our economy. In the United States, family-owned businesses account for more than 56 percent of the country’s GDP and employ over 60 percent of its workforce. These firms are often asset-rich but cash-poor, with capital tied up in land, equipment, or payroll rather than liquid savings. When their owners die, however, heirs are sometimes forced to sell the business simply to pay the estate tax.
Relatively few firms are subject to the estate tax today. But recent reform proposals, such as the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act of 2024 (AHEMA), would lower exemption thresholds and expose more estates to devastating levies.
Family farms are especially at risk. In 2024, for example, Wisconsin farmers warned that AHEMA would “cripple” these farms by forcing them to sell their properties.
U.K. families have had a similar experience. After Britain expanded its inheritance tax, a lobbying group surveyed 4,200 family-owned businesses and farms. Many respondents reported slashing hiring and investment. Others said that they considered selling their properties. The tax hike reportedly put “200,000 jobs at risk.”
The broader economic consequences extend beyond family firms. The Tax Policy Center found that beneficiaries of one or more bequests over the past 20 years were some 13 percentage points more likely to become business owners. Every additional $1 million inherited raised that probability by roughly 1 percentage point. By cutting into after-tax bequests, inheritance taxes directly weaken one of the most reliable pathways to entrepreneurship.
Estate taxes can distort a business’s behavior long before the owner dies. Entrepreneurs typically reinvest earnings rather than stockpiling liquid assets. But the prospect of paying inheritance taxes induces owners to divert capital into nonproductive assets, such as life insurance, to cover future tax liabilities. This reduces innovation and dampens long-term economic growth.
Family businesses are already fragile: 70 percent fail to survive to the second generation. This in turn makes it harder for middle-class entrepreneurs to grow wealth. Even Janet Yellen, no critic of redistribution, has acknowledged that inheritances are “common among households below the top of the wealth distribution and sizable enough that they may well play a role in helping these families economically.”
At the broader, societal level, inherited wealth, coupled with a sense of duty, creates a civilization’s infrastructure. The wealth that built universities, hospitals, and charities did not appear out of thin air. It was created and passed down by those who believed their obligations extended beyond their lifetimes.
The Rockefellers founded universities and public health programs that still shape global medicine. The Carnegies built libraries and educational institutions that enriched the lives of generations of working-class Americans. Even today, these families’ foundations fund important art, science, and social programs.
The growing hostility toward generational wealth is a moral and social crisis. “Each generation sees farther than the generation that preceded it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation,” Ronald Reagan observed. Inherited wealth is a means of preserving what works, improving what doesn’t, and passing forward the accumulated achievements of the past.
Shame and suspicion are eroding the ethic of stewardship. A society that teaches its most capable citizens to feel guilt rather than duty will not become fairer. It will hollow itself out materially, culturally, and morally, until there is little left worth inheriting.
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