Making Your Mind Up

Letters to the Telegraph:

Moral Money: ‘My dad is squandering my inheritance, can I ask him to stop?’

My divorced father, who is in his late 60s, is spending huge amounts on holidays, luxuries and generally living the high life.
I worry there will be little left for me in my inheritance. I am 35, and I feel that my father’s generation had it easier when it came to making and saving money. Can I ask him to be more thrifty?

GH, via letter

The reply is cut off by the ‘Give us money’ banner, so can’t be read, however it starts with, “You are a victim of the intergenerational wealth gap”, so probably isn’t worth bothering with anyway

My beef is this…

The kind of person who could ask this question obviously feels entitled to an inheritance. Someone with that level of entitlement has clearly subscribed to the notion that was about to be explained in the reply; the intergenerational wealth gap and how the Baby Boomers had things so much better than those who came after. How the older generation owe something to the younger generation and how they are privileged etc. The general idea being that young people have a right to the fruits of older peoples labour.

On the other side of the coin, the same people with this advanced level of entitlement, believe that inheritance is inherently evil and a 100% inheritance tax should be imposed, so that such wealth goes to the Government to be spent ‘wisely’, rather than offspring who will be selfish with it.

Most rational minded and free thinking people would say that you can’t have it both ways, but of course we are not dealing with such people, we are dealing ignorant Socialists with a self important chip on their shoulder. Those people can have it both ways.

Inheritance is good if it goes to them and bad if it goes to other people. ‘Them’, being the downtrodden younger generation whose financial future has being stolen by their forefathers. ‘Other people’, being anyone who has more money than them or, ‘The Rich’.

See how it works?