Wednesday, June 22, 2016

You Can't Take It with You. . .

. . . but you can pass it along: Florence has had the same wealthiest families for 600 years

2 comments:

Matthew said...

I'm pretty sure that economic levels are more fluid in the US than other countries. I think the Vanderbilts are rather poor now. Donald Trump, while wealthy, is not as wealthy as his father.

Don Coffin said...

Inheritance of wealth tends to vary some over time, depending on a lot of things (including tax policies, but that's not as important as many might think). There's a lot of evidence that inheritance was a leading cause of wealth in the US for a long time. For the past few decades, inheritance has declined somewhat (but not a lot) as a source of wealth. It will be interesting to see how the newly rich (Gates, etc.) bequeath their fortunes--inherited wealth might well make a comeback, and, in fact, some economists (Thomas Piketty leaps to mind; his book on wealth is pretty amazing btw) think it's inevitable.