1. Inherited wealth is unearned, unmerited, ie corrupt wealth.
2. Inherited privilege is generally accepted as being unjustifiable now, yet wealth is the most desired form of privilege, the one that is most able to provide pleasure without responsibility.
3. How can poor people be expected to lead law abiding lives when they see vast fortunes falling into people's laps for doing absolutely nothing, merely by the accident of having rich parents or relations?
4. These days, most people can live comfortably without inheriting anything. If all the wealth that is currently inherited went towards tax reduction everybody would benefit more fairly.
5. Luck isn't an adequate basis for reward in a civilised society.
6. Death duties are, (or at least were), 100% in Japan but apparently everybody manages to avoid them. How could 100% death duties be collected reliably and efficiently?
7. People could perhaps be allowed to nominate how they wanted a proportion of their death duties to be used, ie on the provision of nursery schools, on the NHS or whatever.
8. A small group of people dominate society largely as a result of inheriting wealth, they ensure that society is organised so that they can protect their advantage, this (corrupt) domination needs to be broken. If these people are so clever (and virtuous) they should be able to rise to the top without the benefit of inherited wealth and their other privileges.
9. Everybody should be able to request that another person's financial affairs be checked if they seem to possess more wealth than they should.
10. Everybody's financial affairs should be open to scrutiny by everybody else so that fraud can be easily detected.
11. The children of the prosperous classes have an enormous advantage anyway without inherited wealth, if they are so superior they should be able to make their own money as the poor are expected to.
12. The rest of the tax system would be adjusted to compensate for the disappearance of inheritance. For example, a deposit for a house might be given to couples when they get married, or young people might pay no income tax until they reach a certain age, twenty five say.
13. If passing on wealth by inheritance is made unlawful because it is a form of corruption then the passing on of wealth in the form of gifts is equally undesirable and hence unlawful. There must be limitation of the value of gifts.
14. Property and wealth would pass to the state when it's owner dies. Property would be sold, probably by auction usually. The proceeds would become part of the state's tax revenue.
15. Elderly people may sell all their property and spend all their money profligately then expect the state to look after them until they die. Is this good for the economy and hence the state or should it be prevented?
16. If profligate spending on luxuries was taxed heavily it might not do much harm.
17. If the burden of care fell on the children of the old rather than the state it would be a disincentive to rash behaviour.
18. If the care provided by the state to spendthrifts was very basic this would also be a disincentive.
19. Profligate spending could be prevented by limiting the amount of money that could be taken from bank accounts per annum if there was no other effective way.
20. For this policy to be administered fairly, all transactions would have to be recorded. If all monetary transactions were made electronically it would be straightforward to keep track of them. Acquisition and disposal of property, ie by barter or gift, would also have to be tracked, this might be more difficult but shouldn't be impossible. It would probably only be necessary to track items above a certain value.

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