Is there a “charity” that is not in some way or other corrupt these days? Look at the annual accounts of any charity and see how much of the income is spent on “admin” including wages and salaries. Look also at recent headlines. How many are engaged in polital activities which is not allowed by their charter. The Charities Commission needs to have more powers and the will to use them. My children will always come first during my life and after if I have anything left to leave.
Is there a “charity” that is not in some way or other corrupt these days?
Not many 
Charities are a nice earner for many.
It’s a shame that this is an aviation forum,
This is why we have this special purpose thread, and I moved the posts to it
because my wife and I, and several friends, have been engaged recently in the debate about the ethics around inherited wealth.
Currently, in the UK, you can bequest your assets to anybody you like (subject to some potentially nasty and continually evolving rules to do with dependent persons, etc) and I think that is how it should be. Your estate pays the same amount of inheritance tax no matter who you give it to (other than registered charities, AFAIK) unless you give it to your spouse or civil partner.
Why should a law prohibit giving it to your kids, while allowing it to be given to some unrelated 3rd party? It would anyway be problematic because you could arrange for the 3rd party to then give it to the kids… this is already widely done in cases where you suspect the kids would waste it if they got it in one lump.
I am not so interested in the law as the ethics.
And there are very many charities which do great stuff with their funds and are not corrupt. I started one such myself and my wife two others. I would stand by every single thing they have done.
The thing is that the Daily Mail only reports the corrupt ones, just like the knife wielding black kids, bomb wearing Muslims and criminal travellers.
Timothy wrote:
I am not so interested in the law as the ethics.And there are very many charities which do great stuff with their funds and are not corrupt. I started one such myself and my wife two others. I would stand by every single thing they have done.
The thing is that the Daily Mail only reports the corrupt ones, just like the knife wielding black kids, bomb wearing Muslims and criminal travellers.
Hear, hear!
Timothy wrote:
Is there a moral or ethical argument for giving it to your kids? I do understand the emotional argument, because you love them, but I am looking for something more fundamental. I guess love wouldn’t enter into it if inherited wealth were not permitted by law.
Anybody’s assets are private property and will remain so in any free society – you cannot confiscate legally obtained wealth in a free society, and if you do so you should expect (and will likely get) a revolution. With that reality in mind, and knowing that most people will leave their assets to their kids, you are putting your children at a competitive disadvantage in the real world if you opt out of doing what others will do. As time moves on more people worldwide leave behind more assets and I suspect that in due course unless a person inherits something they will get left behind, particularly in terms of owning property in desirable areas, and more so generation after generation. In my view it is therefore your responsibility to earn enough, and save enough, to leave something for your kids if you have them… which is one of several reasons that I chose not to have any.
There are many effective private charities, more so than government programs which typically hand the money to their counterparts in the corrupt foreign regimes that created the need for charity, and I suppose some fraction of my assets will eventually go to them.
Silvaire wrote:
you are putting your children at a competitive disadvantage in the real world
No.
I am not hugely wealthy, but I am wealthier than most parents in the world. By world standards I am probably in the top few centiles. I would not be putting my kids at any disadvantage over the vast, vast majority of others. Meanwhile, I have already paid for one of mine to get a PhD at Cambridge and the other to spend many years in postgraduate training to be an opera singer. They already have massive, humongous advantages over nearly all other kids.
That’s the dilemma. Why should they get more wealth, that they haven’t earned, when they are already so competitively advantaged?
And, please don’t get me wrong. I really don’t know the answer, that is why I am reaching out for input.
I’ve told you my view. How much you choose to leave to your kids is obviously up to you – you’re fortunate that you can and have given them a lot already, it sounds like enough that they aren’t (for example) going to be pushed out of the property market where they grew up. Parents without that level of assets have to (and should) try harder for their kids, and leave proportionately more if they want their kids to compete in today’s real world. Or don’t have kids, another valid choice in a world that is already sickeningly overpopulated..
My parents like many others in the world gave me precisely nothing except a stable home until I left to support myself. Happily I stumbled into several situations that have allowed work and long term investment to translate into enough accumulated assets to compete for finite resources like housing, land etc. I wouldn’t want to count on that level of luck for my kids, if I had them, because increasingly other kids won’t be relying on luck and given ever rising tax rates, work is not as effective as it once was.
Another point that can be made is that money is a tool, and lots of it in one place is a disproportionately effective tool. If somebody has enough money early in life they can over a lifetime add value to the world at a level they would never do otherwise – by starting companies, employing people, developing and producing useful goods etc. If somebody thinks their kid has the potential to do good in that fashion, spending the money or leaving it to charity instead would be a huge waste. It depends on the kid.
I favour IHT. It provides a partial solution to the redistribution of wealth. The trick is to get the rates and bands right.
In one sense IHT is therefore one legal means of confiscating wealth that is supported at both ends of reasonable centre politics.
You still pay IHT (UK) if you give it to your kids – there is no concession. The only workaround is for the donor to survive the gift by 7 years.
Is there a moral or ethical argument for giving it to your kids? I do understand the emotional argument, because you love them, but I am looking for something more fundamental.
I think there is. It’s the fact that you and your wife decided to put them on the planet. They did not have a vote in it. So, form an ethical point of view, you are responsible for their wellbeing. Not until you die of course, until THEY die..
Of course you do everything to give your kids a good start in life, like providing love, enabling education. And of course you’ll find the kids very eager to make sure they can make it on their own. Nevertheless, you never know and there may be a need for a nice litle reserve for them one day.
Funnily enough, my kids are like Timothy’s. They also would like us to spend every penny. But I don’t think there is anything to buy/do in our personal lives that would provide us with more happiness. Yes, increase of the charity budget is always possible, and it one searches properly there are genuinely effective ones. For now I think I’ve found a good balance between personal spending, charity and leaving a nice reserve for my kids.
