And that can be physical, mental, even emotional. Pressure, that is. We often hear, quite properly, Use it or lose it. This refers to physical capabilities, in most cases. But Michelle Singletary of WaPo has brought up the important topic of inheritance:
Some super-rich parents — Warren Buffett and Bill Gates — have said they do not plan to leave their adult children a great percentage of the wealth they’ve accumulated.
Of course, it’s a bit relative if you’re still getting millions of dollars from mom and pop.
“Intergenerational transfers are a widespread phenomenon, with an average of roughly 2 million households receiving either an inheritance or a substantial gift each year,” according to a 2018 Federal Reserve report.
But stories that wealthy business people such as Gloria Vanderbilt, who died last week at 95, do not want to pass on their considerable fortune to their heirs made me wonder: Should you leave an inheritance to your children? …
While interviewing Cooper in 2014, radio host Howard Stern asked: “Your mother inherited money. Why shouldn’t you inherit money?”
“I think it’s an initiative sucker,” Cooper said. “I think it’s a curse. Who’s inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in their own life? From the time I was growing up, if I felt like there was some pot of gold waiting for me, I don’t know that I would have been so motivated.”
I’ve remarked on inheritance before, in the context of a meritocracy, and I must admit that I find the question of inheritance to be problematic. There are many cases of inheritances wasted by the recipients, although I have no idea if anyone’s sat down and actually examined the problem.
But I think of it this way: a species isolated from evolutionary pressures have little reason to change. After all, another way of thinking of this isolation is to say that they’re doing so well that there’s no reason to change. Apply this thinking to the human organism who receives an inheritance, and you realize there’s a predisposition for that organism to, well, sit on his or her hands.
This is not a deterministic statement, of course, because we are not all economic beings. Some of us are driven by other and numerous impulses, ranging from art to politics (think of the Roosevelt family, both Teddy and Franklin, who were cousins). But the easy availability of the trappings of life are, in the main, not likely to encourage someone to explore the extremities of life that can lead to an outsized results.
If that matters to you, restriction of inheritance to your children, or the cultivation of interests other than economic in your children may be of importance.
