You know the Bank of Mum and Dad when you see it: it’s your friend who seems broke, but always has a safety net, or who suddenly (but discreetly) acquires the deposit for a home. It’s those who stayed with their parents while they saved for a flat, or stuck it out in a profession they were passionate about even though the wages are chronically low. It’s those who do not need to consider the financial costs of having children. It’s those whose grandparents are covering nursery or university fees, with the Bank of Grandma and Grandad already driving an economic wedge between different cohorts in generations Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) and Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s).
This is the picture we know, but the Bank of Mum and Dad is not just a luxury confined to the 1% – it is also evident in families like mine. I grew up in a working-class household and was the first person in my family to get a degree, but it was the fact my parents had scrimped in the 1980s to purchase properties in London (and allowed me to crash in one throughout my 20s) that has arguably been the true source of opportunities in my life.
In recent years, we have rightly widened the conversation about privilege in society. And yet how honest are we about one of the most obvious forces shaping anyone under 45: the presence or absence of a parental safety net? The truth is that we live in an inheritocracy. If you’ve grown up in the 21st century, your opportunities are increasingly determined by your access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, rather than by what you earn or learn. The economic roots of this story go back to the 1980s, but it accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, as private wealth soared and wage growth stalled. In the 2020s, rather than a meritocracy – where hard work pays off – we have evolved into an inheritocracy, based on family wealth.
People should always have access to essentials, and I count an affordable reliable roof over their head as one of those things. But are we ever going to be able to change the fact that someone on the receiving end of three generations of doing moderately well in life is going to be massively more advantaged that someone whose parents were 4th and 5th in large poor families?
Someone's parents having even a modest home with a spare room in London puts them at a massive advantage over their peers who have to privately rent. But aside from ensuring the fundamentals are in place of affordable accessible homes, is there really any realistic way of nullifying that advantage and is it even right to do so?
Why shouldn't everyone have access to housing, food, education, tutoring, and transportation like those people who inherit from their parents?
The social impact of engaged parents can't be missed, but there's no reason why there should be a material aspect.
Because, fundamentally, most people work because it makes their life better than if they weren't working.
It we so heavily correct the system so that you get the same house whether your working or not, your kid goes to the same school whether your working or not, they get the same homework tutors whether your working or not, you have access to the same transport or car whether you work or not.. you get the point.
How many people would even turn up to work if it made no material difference to their life?
But as soon as you allow people's effort and choice to create an actual difference in the quality of their and their kids lives then you inevitably end up with inequality, because people make different choices, are motivated to work hard to different degrees. This gets compounded when some families simply build on the moderate success of the parents.
Rather, isn't the better option to just make sure that the "bottom" option is not inhumane and is actually basically alright. In fact, it should be as good as we can possibly make it. BUT then you have to allow that choice, hard work, sacrifice can possibly make a difference and people can improve their lot.
Such a rubbish stance. People want to be usefull. So if the basics are met companies will need to make sure they are not exploitative shitholes like they are now.
Absolutely there is a risk, but this risk is created not by inherent lazyness of people but the shitty/dangerous/ unfulfilling/soul crushing jobs, shitty middle management, asshole atmosphere and the hustle required. You have the effect right but the cause wrong.
This would in practice mean that shitty jobs need to pay a hell of a lot more.. which is good. Then the MBAs can figure out if making the job less of a hellish place can cause them to pay less and where break-even is.
Bear in mind the person I was replying to was advocating equal outcomes. I was questioning the practically of seeing it that way.
The idea that the economy would still remotely function if you make people's material outcome absolutely the same irrespective of what they've worked on is insane.
So in some ideal world people just all do whatever they feel inwardly motivated to do? How in that world do you signal that maybe the village doesn't need another artisan baker, what it could really do with is someone to fix the sewers all day.
How do you do that other than compensate the sewer worker more for a job?
"Pay them a higher (fair) wage?". Well, ok. But that means they're paid more than the bakers are. And now you've sowed the seeds for inequality and we've barely started.
While 2/3rds of the town occupy themselves with art (and good enriching art by the way, art is essential), the "Smith" family decide for three generations to take on the sewer work and for that they're paid more.
But by the time we get to grandson Smith, he had about 30% more savings than his baker friends and although everyone has a house, Smith is able to pay more for that house by the nice trees with a particularly nice view.
Etc. You get the idea. There is too much of human existence that still needs to be motivated by compensation. And as soon as you do that some people will think the sacrifice worth it in order to improve their lot and others won't be so bothered.
If you took everything Mr Smith earned extra from spending all day in sewage and gave it to the bakers children instead so that there isn't any kind of generational inequality. You don't see how that's fundamentally never going to work with humans? Maybe you'll get one or two people who see the social need of cleaning the sewers. But the whole point of compensating some jobs more is that the needs of human society don't neatly line up with what humans are inclined to do, so some sort of personal enrichment is needed to motivate the essential task of wading in shit all day rather than inhaling the amazing aroma of freshly baked bread.
And part of that compensation, what people value, is being able to give some of your sacrifice to your children.
(Although I make it clear at the top what I'm responding to let me also be clear that I in no way think the current exploitative model of capitalism seen in the West is the "best" or "inevitable". No way, it's awful. There are millions of ways it can be improved and the disadvantaged helped. But this idea of current human society being able to function with enforced equal outcomes is delusional)
Wealth accumulates sure, that's why at a certain point taxes should put a brake on that and above an even higher point it should be predominantly taxed. Inheritance tax should allow for some generational transfer but capped at a sane point. And fuckery using foundations etc etc should result in all of it being forfeit.