From Inherited Wealth to a Fair Start

In short: Most of today’s financial unfairness was inherited, not chosen. Wealth keeps earning more wealth, and it passes from one generation to the next. Fixing this in one go would cause fear, resistance and damage. We propose a slow, announced path in three phases. First, give everyone a secure floor. Then change how new wealth flows: inheritances, land gains, pollution. Finally, let the large inherited fortunes return to a common fund that pays for everyone’s start in life. Ordinary savings, pensions and family homes are protected all along the way. Any country can start the first steps alone; the parts where money can move with one click are done by a group of countries together. The fund is run at arm’s length from politics, and the plan spreads piece by piece, through many movements, parties and countries.

The Question

The other articles in this section describe where we want to go. Basic needs are guaranteed for everyone (Universal Allowance). Each generation starts from a fairer base (Inheritance). And the planet’s resources are shared within its limits (Fair Globe Sharing).

This article asks the harder question: how do we get there from here, starting from a world where the richest 10% of people own about three quarters of all wealth and the poorer half owns about 2%?

Why Change Is Hard

Plans for a fairer society usually fail on the way there, not at the destination. Four things make the transition difficult:

• Unfairness feeds itself. Wealth invested in shares, property or land tends to grow faster than wages. Those who already have it get further ahead every year, and their children start ahead too.
• People fear losing what they have. A family that owns its home, or has saved for retirement, can easily feel threatened by any talk of redistribution, even when it is aimed at fortunes a thousand times larger.
• Countries compete. If one country acts alone, large fortunes, companies and investment can move to another one. Even the European Union, which has gone further than most on fairness and climate, is falling behind the United States and China in income growth.
• Governments change. A reform that one government passes, the next can cancel. Long changes need support that lasts beyond one election.

A good transition plan has to answer all four.

What History Teaches

Large, peaceful shifts in who owns what have happened before:

• West Germany, 1952. The Lastenausgleich (“equalisation of burdens”) asked people who had kept their property after the war to pay a levy of up to half of its value, in small instalments over 30 years, mostly out of income. The money went to the millions who had lost everything. Spread out that way, it became bearable.
• Japan, 1946 to 1950. A land reform bought farmland from large landowners and sold it cheaply to the families who worked it. Rural poverty fell sharply, but landowners were paid in bonds that inflation soon made almost worthless. The lesson: fast and abrupt works, but it leaves bitterness.
• Alaska and Norway. Both turned oil income into a common fund. Alaska pays every resident a yearly dividend (since 1982); Norway saves its oil money and only spends about the yearly return. These funds have lasted for decades, under governments of all colours, because everyone sees what they get from them.
• Finland, 2017 to 2018. A two-year test gave 2,000 unemployed people €560 a month with no conditions. They worked slightly more, not less, and felt much more secure.
• The global minimum tax, 2021. More than 130 countries agreed that large companies should pay at least 15% tax wherever they operate. “Money will just leave” can be answered when countries act together.
• Ireland, 2016 to 2018. A Citizens’ Assembly of 99 people chosen at random studied hard questions for months, and its advice led to the 2018 referendum on abortion. Given time and facts, ordinary people can find agreement on deeply divisive subjects.

HappyBein’s Proposed Direction

This is a proposal for discussion, not a finished policy. Some points still need further clarification and support.

Eight principles

1. Floor first. Secure everyone’s basic needs before asking anyone to give anything up. People accept change much more easily when they are not afraid.
2. Announce everything early, including the rules for leaving. Publish the whole path and its dates many years in advance. The rules for those who leave the country apply from the day of the announcement: slow for those who stay, no head start for those who leave.
3. Protect the ordinary, focus on the concentrated. Family homes up to a fair value, pensions, normal savings and working family businesses are protected. The changes apply to very large fortunes.
4. Make the economy stronger, not weaker. Steps that are fair and raise productivity come first, and the pace follows the economic strength of the countries taking part.
5. Change the flows before the stocks. Start with new money: inheritances, land values rising without any effort from the owner, pollution and resource use. Only later, and gradually, touch fortunes that already exist.
6. Make the gains visible. Money raised goes into a common fund that people can see, paying for the part of the basic-needs allowance that salaries, pensions and welfare budgets don’t cover, and a starting capital for every young adult, not into the general budget.
7. Tax first what can’t move, and do the rest as a group. Land, buildings and natural resources stay where they are, so any country can start there alone. Money that can move with one click is taxed by a group of countries large enough to matter.
8. Decide together, test first. Use citizens’ assemblies to shape the details, and pilots to check that each step works before it goes national.

Alone or together

A simple rule decides who does what: if it stays put, one country can act alone. If it can move with one click, countries act together.

One country can do alone	Needs a group of countries
Guarantee basic needs (pilots first, then the full allowance)	Tax financial wealth held anywhere: shares, funds, bank accounts abroad
Public registers of who owns land, buildings and companies	The lifetime cap on large inheritances
Citizens’ assemblies on the plan	A fossil-fuel tax on industries that compete with other countries, with a border charge on imports
Tax land and buildings more, and work less	Minimum rates nobody goes below, so no member takes fortunes from another
Tax rent and profits from local land, buildings and companies, where they are	A small shared fund for what crosses borders
Rules for those who leave (see below)
A fossil-fuel tax on homes, transport and local businesses, returned to people
Start the common fund and the starting capital for young adults

Phase 1 is everything in the first column, so any country can start tomorrow. Phase 2 begins once a group is ready for the second column. If no group forms yet, a country doesn’t stop: it goes further on what it can do alone and keeps pushing for the group.

Three phases

Phase 1: Build the floor and the trust (about the first 5 years)

• Pilot the Universal Allowance in a few regions, then extend it step by step.
• Make ownership visible: a public register of who really owns companies, land and large fortunes.
• Tax the wealth income that can’t escape, where it is earned: rent, gains on land, and profits of companies based in the country. Start shifting taxes off work and onto land.
• Put the rules for leaving in place from the day the plan is announced. From that day, gifts also count towards the future lifetime cap, so giving everything away early doesn’t escape it.
• Start a common fund, at first from taxes on land and rent.
• Tax fossil fuels and pollution used by homes, transport and local businesses, and give all of that money back to people, equally, through the fund (see The Energy Transition). Most ordinary households get back more than they pay, because the rich use far more energy.
• Hold a citizens’ assembly on the full path, and publish its timeline.

Phase 2: Change the flows, together (roughly years 5 to 20)

• With a group of countries, tax income from all financial wealth, wherever it is held, at the same rates as income from work, and close the main loopholes.
• Extend the fossil-fuel tax to industries that compete abroad, with a border charge so imports pay the same.
• Introduce a lifetime cap on what one person can receive in inheritances and gifts. Anything above the cap goes to the common fund. The cap starts generous and is lowered on a published schedule. It applies to heirs who live in the group, wherever the person giving lives.
• The fund starts paying a starting capital to every young adult, for education, a first home or a business.
• Family businesses and farms get a path to pass on the business itself, for example by paying over many years out of its profits, like the German levy.

Phase 3: Complete the shift (roughly years 20 to 40)

• The cap reaches its final level, as in the Inheritance proposal: each person can still receive a meaningful amount, gifts to charities stay allowed, and personal belongings stay in families.
• The common fund, now large, finances the part of the basic-needs allowance that salaries, pensions and welfare budgets don’t cover, and everyone’s starting capital.
• What a person owns then reflects mainly their own life and work, no longer the luck of being born into a rich family.

What If One Country Goes First?

The answer to competition is not to wait until every country agrees. It is a shared floor of rules, with each country free to go further, as with trade, the ozone layer and the global minimum tax. Four things make it possible to go first without losing:

1. Tax what can’t leave first, as above.
2. Rules for leaving, from day one. People who move away pay tax on the gains they built up here, as if they had sold (Germany, France and Norway already do this). The rules follow them for 10 years (Germany already applies its inheritance tax for 5 years after a move abroad). And the lifetime cap counts where the heirs live, so a rich parent moving abroad doesn’t help if the children stay. None of this forbids leaving, and it takes nothing from those who stay.
3. Protect the borders without closing them. The EU’s carbon border charge, from 2026, makes imports from countries without a carbon price pay the difference, so producers who go first aren’t undercut.
4. Start as a group, and choose steps that make the economy stronger. A group the size of the EU is too large a market to walk away from. Europe’s slower growth comes mainly from expensive energy, too little investment and markets split into 27 sets of rules, not from fairness. Moving taxes off work and onto land makes work cheaper (economists widely see a land tax as the least harmful tax there is), cheap renewable energy tackles Europe’s biggest cost, and a starting capital lets more young people study, start a business or take a risk.

Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands combine high taxes with strong economies, partly because security, good education and trust attract people and businesses too.

Who Manages the Fund?

The common fund will become very large, so no single party should control it. The job is split four ways:

1. Parliament writes the rules once, in a law that is hard to change: what the fund pays for, how much it may pay out and what it may invest in.
2. An independent public body manages the money, with professional managers on long, fixed terms, at arm’s length from the government. Norway’s oil fund is run this way, by a unit of its central bank.
3. Citizens watch over it. A small panel chosen at random reviews the fund every year and reports publicly, and anyone can see online what came in and what went out.
4. Payouts follow a fixed formula, for example at most about 3% of the fund’s value each year, shared equally.

The fund and its formula need the strongest protection available, such as the constitution. Alaska shows why: its fund is in the state constitution, but the dividend formula was an ordinary law, and since 2016 the state has repeatedly paid out less than promised. Most of the money stays in broad, low-risk investments; only a small, capped part goes to new technology at home, because home investment is where political favours creep in.

Each country keeps its own fund at first. People accept paying more when they see it coming back to them and their neighbours, and a single fund from day one would mean large transfers between countries. What the group shares from the start are the rules, plus a small shared fund for what crosses borders, paid mainly by the carbon border charge: it helps poorer members catch up and pays for shared power grids. The EU’s joint borrowing of about €750 billion after Covid (2020) shows this is possible. More can be pooled as trust grows.

Objections

• “It’s my money, and I want to give it to my children.” The wish is deeply human. That is why the plan starts by guaranteeing every child a floor and a starting capital: the security parents want for their own children becomes something all children get.
• “The rich will leave.” Some will try. The answer is a group acting together, taxes on leaving from the day of the announcement, ownership registers, and taxes tied to land and activity inside the country.
• “We’ll lose against countries that don’t do this.” Only if the steps make the economy weaker. That’s why steps that raise productivity come first, and the pace follows the economy’s strength.
• “Governments will waste the money.” That is why the fund is separate, transparent and watched by citizens, like Norway’s.
• “The next government will cancel it.” A path decided with citizens, announced long in advance and paying benefits everyone can see is much harder to cancel. Few politicians would dare to take away every young adult’s starting capital.
• “A fossil-fuel tax hurts competitiveness.” For industries that compete abroad, it comes only with a border charge. Sweden has had one of the world’s highest carbon taxes since 1991, and its emissions fell while its economy kept growing.
• “Forty years is too slow.” Slow at the top, but not at the bottom: the floor comes first. The slowness is in the part that, done fast, would cause fear and flight.

How It Could Actually Happen

This is not a programme for one candidate who gets elected and does it all. The plan runs over about ten elections, and the parts done together need several governments to agree. Big changes usually follow the same pattern, over 10 to 30 years:

1. An idea is written down clearly, like Britain’s Beveridge Report in 1942, which described a welfare state.
2. People and organisations spread it: associations, unions, researchers, journalists.
3. Parties take up pieces of it, often several parties, each with the parts that suit them.
4. A crisis or an election opens a window, and a piece becomes law. After the war, Britain built its welfare state within a few years.
5. Once people see the benefits, it becomes hard to undo.

Some pieces are already on that path: the global minimum tax (2021), Brazil’s 2024 request to the G20 to study a minimum tax on billionaires, and Ireland’s citizens’ assemblies, which began as a small university trial in 2011. So this plan is best seen as a menu that different movements, parties and countries can pick up over time. The Society Guide’s part is step 1: explaining the idea clearly, so that others can spread it.

First Steps

Things that can start now:

• Join or support a group already working on a piece of the plan: see Who’s Working on This.
• Support public registers of who really owns companies and land.
• Ask candidates where they stand on two or three concrete pieces of this plan.
• Use the European Citizens’ Initiative: with one million signatures from at least seven EU countries, the European Commission must respond.
• Back pilots of guaranteed basic needs, and citizens’ assemblies on wealth and inheritance.
• In your own life: talk about what you will pass on and why, and consider giving to causes beyond your own family.

The Human Side

Money is rarely just money. For most people it stands for safety, freedom and the ability to look after those they love. These are needs every person has, described in the Personal Guide as physical health and energy, safety and security, social connection, autonomy, and meaning and purpose. A fair transition shouldn’t take these away from anyone. It should make them reliable for everyone, so that nobody has to hoard to feel safe.

Roadmap Step

This proposal is the bridge to steps 4 and 5 of the Vision & Roadmap: guaranteeing a basic-needs budget, and capping inheritance so everyone gets a fair start. It shows the order and pace in which both could happen.

Open Questions

• Where exactly should the lifetime cap start, and how fast should it fall?
• What counts as a “fair value” family home that stays fully protected?
• How can countries at different levels of wealth move along this path together?
• How can the past be acknowledged, for example wealth built on colonial extraction, without making the transition impossible?

Where Next

• Before this: Inheritance, on why passing on fortunes keeps unfairness alive
• The floor: Universal Allowance
• Who is already working on pieces of it: Who’s Working on This
• The full direction: Vision & Roadmap

Sources

• World Inequality Lab, World Inequality Report 2022, on how wealth is shared worldwide
• Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), on why wealth grows faster than wages
• Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (2015), which proposes a lifetime tax on what people receive and a starting capital for every young adult
• Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice (2019), on taxing large fortunes and avoidance
• OECD, Inheritance Taxation in OECD Countries (2021)
• Michael L. Hughes, Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat: West Germany and the Reconstruction of Social Justice (1999), on the Lastenausgleich
• Ronald P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (1959)
• Kela, Results of Finland’s Basic Income Experiment (2020)
• OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework, Statement on a Two-Pillar Solution (2021), the global minimum tax
• OECD, Common Reporting Standard (2014), the automatic exchange of bank information between countries
• Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness (European Commission, 2024)
• European Union, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (Regulation 2023/956)
• Government Offices of Sweden, Sweden’s carbon tax, on its results since 1991
• Court of Justice of the EU, de Lasteyrie du Saillant (C-9/02, 2004), on exit taxes inside the EU
• The Citizens’ Assembly (Ireland), final reports (2017 and 2018), and We the Citizens (2011), the pilot assembly
• William Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (the Beveridge Report, 1942)
• Gabriel Zucman, A Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals (report for the Brazilian G20 presidency, 2024)
• European Union, Regulation on the European Citizens’ Initiative (2019/788)
• Norges Bank Investment Management, Government Pension Fund Global, on how Norway’s fund is run
• Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, history of the fund and the dividend
• European Commission, NextGenerationEU (2020), and its proposal for new EU own resources (2021)