Social Justice and Inherited WealthDr Dan Halliday (University of Melbourne)
G16 (Jim Potter Room)
Old Physics Building
Melbourne
Australia
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Abstract: Discussion of inherited wealth featured prominently in philosophical work on economics and social justice from the 17th to early 20th centuries, but became markedly less prominent after the second world war. In a current book manuscript, I try to reverse this trend. While the problem of inheritance never really went away, recent work in the social sciences has indicated that inherited wealth is enjoying a resurgence. Political philosophy needs to develop some sort of foundational treatment of how inherited wealth connects with problems of social justice. Principally, I argue that the flow of inherited wealth needs to be restricted due to its role in maintaining what I call 'economic segregation'. Properly developed, this concern leads to the following proposal: Inheritance should not be taxed simply in proportion with its (monetary) size, as is often assumed. Instead, an inheritance tax should be sensitive to the age of a fortune, measured (perhaps) in terms of how many times it has been passed from one generation to the next. I shall concentrate on comparing some older utilitarian defences of this idea with the socially egalitarian defence that is now more plausible, given the role that inheritance plays in maintaining a more segregated society.
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