You might not need your money when you're dead, but people you very much wanted to provide for and support, like your spouse or your children, certainly do need it if they survive you. Providing for one's family is one of the main motivations for people to do productive work and create wealth.
> Do you have a dataset showing people without children work less hard and create less wealth?
That wouldn't be the right calculation. If a person has children, their children will contribute to future GDP. So a proper analysis of having children on the economy would compare the output of:
- someone without children; and
- someone with children plus the net output of their children discounted to present day value.
I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the average person without children individually contributes more to GDP than the average person with children. However, that's largely because raising children takes time, labor, and resources. The person with children is sacrificing their own individual wealth and production and investing it their children. However, when the children's future production is taken into account, discounted by the future value of that production, I suspect that it turns out the other way.
I don't have data on this and although my suspicions feel correct, maybe they aren't. I'd be genuinely to see such data.
> That wouldn't be the right calculation. If a person has children, their children will contribute to future GDP
I think you're taking that in the wrong direction. The op was suggesting that the primary reason people work hard and create wealth is because they want to leave money for their children after they're dead, and that a redistributive estate tax would prevent that. Essentially: people are primarily motivated to create because of their children.
> The op was suggesting that the primary reason people work hard and create wealth is because they want to leave money for their children after they're dead
No, I was not. I was saying that that is one of the main reasons, not the main reason.
> Do you have a dataset showing people without children work less hard and create less wealth?
That's not what I was claiming. I was only claiming that providing for one's family is one of the main motivations for people to do productive work and create wealth, not that it is the only motivation.
Do you have a dataset showing that people with spouses and children do not do productive work and create wealth?
