After the proposal of an unconditional basic income, an unconditional basic inheritance should now be seriously discussed. Free money for all young people funded by the rich. Economic researchers from Berlin and the SPD think that’s great.
20,000 euros starting capital for everyone on their 18th birthday! The idea came from the economic research institute DIW Berlin, the unofficial “think tank” for the SPD and the Left Party. Economic researchers speak of a “basic inheritance”. This is intended to give those who do not inherit from their parents a small fortune.
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This has now been taken up by the SPD politician Carsten Schneider, the federal government’s representative for Eastern Europe. “Building property is no longer possible for a large part of the population, especially in the metropolises,” said Schneider of the Funke media group. “A basic inheritance would be an interesting instrument to stop this development and to make the starting opportunities in working life a little fairer.”
20,000 euros as a gift from the state for an 18th birthday? Before teenagers start making plans about which car or which long-distance trip they can finance with it, they should not overlook the fine print. The DIW does not advocate payment in cash. Rather, the money should only be used for specific purposes.
Stefan Bach from the DIW, who developed the concept, speaks of “usage requirements”. The 20,000 euros should therefore be spent to finance training, to purchase residential property, to start self-employment or to found a company, for further training or to compensate for loss of income in the event of unemployment or illness. The care of children, the elderly or the disabled could also be funded. “Amounts that are not exhausted could earn interest and be made available for retirement or freely available in old age,” according to the DIW.
dr Hugo Müller-Vogg is a journalist, book author and former editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).
The advocates of the basic inheritance are not only interested in better starting opportunities for young people from socially disadvantaged families. The DIW propagates a large-scale redistribution from top to bottom under the motto “Prosperity for all”. Bach: “The high wealth inequality should be reduced through redistribution: by giving the half without property a basic inheritance for wealth accumulation, which is financed by taxes on large wealth.”
The financing of the basic inheritance, estimated at 15 billion per year, should – who else? – take over the “rich”. The DIW researcher Bach, who worked on the SPD’s tax increase plans for the federal elections, advocates higher inheritance taxes, higher taxation of real estate gains or the reintroduction of a wealth tax. Schneider envisages a significantly higher inheritance tax for the “top ten percent”. As a rule, the family entrepreneurs would have to bear the lion’s share of the additional burden, since the majority of private assets are tied up in companies.
According to the DIW, the basic inheritance should be paid out “unconditionally”. That would mean that even the sons and daughters of the “rich” would benefit from this state aid, which of course does not fit with the thesis that it is primarily about improving the “half” without property. The adjective “unconditionally” has already led to criticism from the left, because children from upper-class families do not need this jump-start. One can easily imagine that many politicians from the SPD, Greens and Left would try to limit the basic inheritance to certain social classes.
The far greater problem in implementing this concept would arise in use. If you want to protect young people from spending the money quickly and lavishly, you have to control exactly what the money is being withdrawn from this account for. One can already imagine that a “Federal Office for the Control of the Use of Basic Inheritance” would then arise, a mammoth bureaucracy with branches in all larger municipalities and cities. After all, according to DIW estimates, the number of recipients is growing by around 750,000 young people every year. And their accounts would have to be monitored for life.
Strictly speaking, the new authority would then have to carefully check whether the planned study visit abroad is really necessary, whether the “start-up” concept is viable, whether the second or third attempt at vocational training promises success, or whether someone is really so ill that he is temporarily unable to work. The question then arises as to whether training as a surf trainer in Hawaii, to be financed with money from the inheritance account, is a sensible investment or “just” a dream vacation.
The review of the “use conditions” would turn into a huge job-creation program for experts of all kinds, not least for lawyers and judges. After all, those affected would go to court in droves if payments were refused – in case of doubt at the expense of the state treasury.
You can twist and turn it as you like: either the basic inheritance becomes an invitation to spend money or it becomes such a bureaucratic matter that many recipients would be overwhelmed to use it properly. In any case, it would inflate the welfare state even further and put an even greater burden on the “rich”, who already contribute disproportionately to tax revenue. The unconditional basic inheritance, like the unconditional basic income, falls into the category: socialism through the back door. When it comes to basic inheritance, the state takes it from the “rich” and gives it to the “poor” – but meticulously dictates to its welfare state subjects what they are allowed to do with “their” inheritance.
