The Walton kids are ABSURDLY wealthy – and you're benefitting

What's fair and what works

At which point we come to one of the great divides. In the jargon, there's equity and there's efficiency. Otherwise known as what's fair and what works. We can all come up with any number of reasons why four members of the lucky sperm club really shouldn't be sharing $100bn between them. Especially if we're not one of those four. But as above, if 97 per cent of the benefit of entrepreneuring comes to us consumers, and leaving the children stinking rich is one of the incentives for the entrepreneuring, well, how much attention should we be paying to what's fair or not?

Note that I do not say that the kiddies deserve that wealth. There is no deserve here. There is only the rational calculation of, well, what will most incentivise the next person to also go out and create $260bn of consumer surplus for us on the Columbus Omnibus to enjoy? Leaving the kids pig-sick rich or taxing it all off them in the name of fairness?

Entirely your choice: that's just not a question that economics can answer. And as I obviously have different moral preferences to many of you, I can't apply mine to your decision. But there is at least an argument that we really just shouldn't worry about those inheritances from entrepreneurs. The effects on our society are so much smaller than the effects of the original work that created the wealth that it's all near irrelevant.

After all, by the time it gets down to the great-grandchildren, someone, somewhere along the line, will have managed to piss it away again. But we'll still be left with that consumer surplus. ®