How Will Society Look Like After the Great Wealth Transfer?

Let's say this circle represents what the US economy produces in one year, about 27 trillion. Now we add China, around 18 trillion, and then Europe, roughly 23 trillion, and then we add every other country on earth. Now you have about $15 trillion. What the entire world does in one year.

The great wealth transfer in the US alone is estimated at $124 trillion, more than a full year of the global economy and four times the entire US economy. That's the scale of the phenomenon we are living through right now. And this is happening all over the world. While the western economies look every day more unequal, policymakers have not paid enough attention to inequality. We are witnessing the rise of millionaires, lavish lifestyles, and on the other end, a middle class that is in pain. I think the American dream is lost. I think, uh, for the most part, we don't even talk about what is the American dream. Society looks broken, and chances of bettering your status are historically low. I think that if I was the president of the United States, or it has to come from the top, what I would do is recognize that this is a national emergency.

But over the next few years, more wealth will change hands than at any other moment in human history. The great wealth transfer, the great boomer wealth transfer, the greatest wealth transfer in history. And all of that will change the world we live in. Certainly, a majority of the wealth in our economy is related to inheritance.

The main beneficiaries of this wealth transfer will be millennials and Gen Z. The youngest generations, the ones labeled the broke generation or the lost generation, made of people that have faced an economy far more difficult than the one their parents grew up in. But now, some will inherit large fortunes and gain a level of financial security they could never have achieved on their own. Others will see the possibility of living in a more equal society drift even farther out of reach. Daughter, we're talking about inherited wealth playing an ever-growing role. So he's telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy, a society of inherited wealth, patrimonial capitalism. So the question I wanted to answer today is, how will society look like after the great wealth transfer? How will we shape the life of people that want to inherit enormous fortunes over the next decades?

For the first time in modern history, a huge portion of society's wealth is concentrated into one aging generation. Take for example, homes, stocks, and lands. Most of it owned by people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, the baby boomer generation. And over the next 20, 25 years, that wealth will move. But before we get there, we need to take a step back. When I started reading about the great wealth transfer, everything led me back to one generation, the baby boomers. Not just their money, but the economic and social system that made this moment possible. And that led me to a simple question: How did the baby boomer generation become the richest generation in history? What did they do so well that the generations after them didn't? So I tried to come up with the simplest explanation possible for the financial success of the baby boomers' era. And in the end, it came down to three pivotal factors. Together, they acted as a force multiplier, amplifying the financial power this generation built over the past decades.

But let's start from the beginning. After the tragedy of World War II, Western societies entered a rare moment in history. A long period of reconstruction, stability, and growing confidence in the future. Economies were expanding. Jobs felt secure. Finally, home ownership seemed within reach. So guess what happens when people start feeling more secure? They begin dreaming about their future. They have hope in the years to come, and in the end, they start having babies and build families. That surge in births gave rise to what we now call the baby boomer generation. They weren't named just after a population boom, but after an era of optimism about the future.

And when baby boomers reached their 30s, the first pivotal factor kicked in, reshaping the financial life of the younger generation of that period. The banking system entered a period of gradual opening. From the late '70s through the '80s in the United States, and then across Europe, the financial sector entered a phase of deregulation. Deregulation started as a response to inflation, stagnation, and growing global competition, economic pressures that were straining the world economy at the time. Rules that kept banks separate, cautious, almost conservative for decades were loosened. And as the rules loosened, so did credit. New financial products, new forms of lending, longer mortgages with easier access, often with fewer guarantees. For the first time, millions of people who would never have qualified for a loan suddenly could. Credit, in effect, became mass market. This didn't happen because families were suddenly richer or more financially secure. It happened because the banking system was expanding risk and trying to sustain the economy. And when you flood with credit the largest generation of 30 in history, the outcome is almost inevitable.

"Want a luxurious home of your own that you can afford now? Interest rates have come down and financing is readily available." Young families flooded the housing market. For the first time in history, ordinary families could borrow huge sums for long periods at declining rates. So when banks opened the floodgates, demand was already waiting. And as you can see right here on this chart, household debt starts rising faster than income. Home ownership spread fast. And as more people bought, prices increased, which made more people want to buy, a sort of self-reinforcing loop. It's no mystery then that baby boomers ended up with the highest home ownership rates in US history, an astonishing 40% share of all residential real estate assets in the country. This single economic factor would have reshaped wealth.

But it didn't work alone because at the same time, another massive force was reshaping the global economy: globalization. It was the moment the world opened up, when borders softened, and the global economy became truly interconnected. Factories moved to Asia. Trade exploded. Millions of new workers joined the global labor market. For companies, this was like attaching a second turbocharger: cheaper production, bigger markets, faster growth. And when corporate profits grow, guess what grows with them? Equities. And they were capitalized directly into financial markets. As global growth accelerated, stock markets reflected that. Indices pushed higher and steadily inflating the value of investment portfolios, financial assets, the housing market, everything at just one direction on the chart: up and to the right.

And then there was the final factor, the one that supercharged all the others: falling interest rates. Interest rates peaked in the early '80s and then fell for almost 30 years. Falling rates do two things: they make borrowing cheaper, and they push asset prices up. Every time interest rates dropped, people could afford bigger mortgages, more expensive homes, larger investments, which drove asset values even higher. Then, after the 2008 crisis, central banks dropped rates to near zero, triggering the longest bull market in history, a 600% surge in the S&P 500, and record high real estate prices. This was the force multiplier.

Now, here's the important part. These specific economic conditions created a world where simply owning assets, not necessarily investing skillfully or taking huge risks, was enough to build wealth. For baby boomers, accumulating assets worked, worked insanely well. If you didn't own assets, you fell behind. The economy grew, and assets inflated. This period ended up making the baby boomers the wealthiest generation ever lived. And they created the great treasure that now is set to be passed away. But we should know that as this wealth moves towards the next generation, it's not entering the same society their parents once knew. It's entering a fundamentally different society, and it's about to shake that from head to toe.

Over the last 30 years, society has changed, the economy has changed, and now, as this wealth transfer unfolds in real time, the generations set to inherit this enormous fortune are millennials and Gen Z. But this generation is starting from a financial position that is radically different from the one their parents began with. And that's why this wealth transfer feels so different this time.

One way to measure how different a generation is from the last one that came before is watching the relationship between asset prices and income. So why don't we watch the most fundamental form of security in modern society: the house? For previous generations, buying a home typically meant paying three or four times an annual salary. But over the last 40 years, that relationship has steadily broken down. If you look at the data, home prices have kept rising while income growth has largely stagnated, making it harder year after year for people to afford a home. In 1985 in the US, the median home price was about 3.5 times the median household income. A serious commitment, yes, but one an average family could realistically plan for. Fast forward to today, and that relationship has broken. By 2025, the median home costs around five times the median income. And in the UK, this shift is even more dramatic. And then there are the major metropolitan areas: London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, where this phenomenon becomes even more extreme. In these cities, median home prices have completely detached from wages, rising to levels that are no longer just expensive, but structurally out of reach for most people.

And housing wasn't the only thing that slipped away from young generations. Since 1985, the S&P has risen by more than 20 times in nominal terms. This is an increase of about 2,000%, not even counting dividends. But over that same period, the median household income grew by about 2.5 times, creating a huge gap. And this gap is impossible to ignore if you translate it into something really concrete. Look at this: In 1999, buying 1% of the median S&P 500 company required the equivalent of 18 minimum wage salaries. And what about today? In 2025, that same 1% requires 440 salaries. Stocks, land, businesses, almost every major asset class grew much faster than wages over the last 40 years. And in this kind of economy, limited access to assets made it far harder for most people to build wealth over the past 40 years. And to make things worse, we are looking at generations that not only own far fewer assets but also carry significantly higher levels of debt than the generation that came before them. This generation looks doomed.

But here comes the big twist: the great wealth transfer. But how massive is this wealth transfer that we are witnessing? It is expected to grow so much in the near future. By one of the most authoritative estimates from Cerulean Associates, around $124 trillion will change hands between older and younger Americans by the 2040s. And about 80% of that wealth will come from baby boomers. This is not a fluke in economic history. It's a once-in-a-century shift. But this transfer isn't just big, it's life-changing. For millions of people, it will mean financial security. A financial security that they could never reach with work alone. For others, it will mean watching the gap widen even further. That's why, as I dug deeper into this research, I realized that the real question wasn't just how much wealth is moving, but how the life of the next generation will look like after this event. Who will actually inherit this great fortune? Because we say this transfer will change lives, we are talking about millennials and Gen Z. But the real question is, how many people will feel this tsunami actually like a life-changing wave, and for how many it will amount to nothing more than a ripple? If the transfer were equal, if everyone received something, the playing field would rebalance. But if it isn't, then the gap between those who inherit and those who don't will expand. And this is exactly how it plays out.

In order to understand which part of society will actually receive this great fortune, let's divide society into three categories: the top 1%, the top 10%, and the bottom 25%. At the same time, let's picture the total amount of transfer that is this big bowl up here. But let's start from the very top of society, from the ones that have the most wealth than others: the top 1% in the United States. The top 1% by wealth alone will receive about 18% of all inherited wealth. In Europe, averaging Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, the top 1% receives about 14%. A tiny group, already ultra-wealthy, capturing a massive share of what's being passed down.

Now, zoom out slightly. When you look at the top 10% by wealth, the picture becomes even clearer. In the US, the top 10% captures around 60% of all wealth transfers. In Europe, the top 10% still takes almost half. So, in both systems, roughly half or more of all inherited wealth stays firmly at the top. And finally, the bottom. The bottom 20% by wealth, the least wealthy quarter of society, receives almost nothing. In the United States, just 1% of total inherited wealth. In Europe, slightly higher, but still only 2%. For a quarter of the population, the great wealth transfer barely shows up at all. No house, no portfolio, no financial assets, maybe a few thousand, sometimes debt. So, this isn't a story about wealth moving down. It's a story about wealth circulating at the top, reinforcing advantages that already exist generation after generation.

Now, from the side of the ones at the top of the distribution, inheritance is not symbolic. It's a wealth event. A house in a major city, a second property, a family business, a portfolio that compounds. And you know what is the data that impressed me the most? While researching this video, I came across a chart that left me pretty surprised. This chart answers a simple question: How much of wealth did people actually build? And how much was handed to them? In simple words, a portion of a person's total wealth that comes from inheritance rather than from income, savings, or wealth built over an entire lifetime. And what it reveals is striking. In the United States, around 65% of total wealth comes from inheritance. In Europe, that figure is about 55%. Which means that for the majority of people in advanced economies, where you start matters more than what you earn. Your entire working life, 40 years of savings, now contributes less than half the wealth you built.

But this isn't something new. We've actually seen this system before. In the past, during the Belle Époque that found its glory time in Europe, and the Gilded Age in the US, the period between the late 19th century and the early 20th century that so well resembles today's society. There is a reason why historians still talk about the late 1800s. If you walked through New York at the turn of the 20th century, or Paris just before World War I, you would have entered a world that felt unstoppable. Cities were expanding. Technology was accelerating. Railroads, electricity, automobiles felt like progress had finally won. And at the very top of society, life had never been better. This was the age of grand mansions on Fifth Avenue, of lavish balls in Paris, of industrialists and bankers whose names became legends: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie. A small elite that didn't just have money; they were the economy. They owned the railroads, the oil, the factories. They were involved in politics, actively participating in shaping the direction of the country.

Now, moving forward to today, cities are different. The most innovative industries have changed, but the pattern is still the same. A small group of people still forms an elite, owning a disproportionate share of the wealth. People no longer work in factories, but social inequality hasn't disappeared. It has simply taken on new forms. And the elites are still intertwined with power. But the resemblance doesn't stop here. Also during the Gilded Age, most fortunes weren't built through salaries but inherited. In Europe, this created an entire generation of rentier people whose wealth came from the past, not from work in the present. That's why economists call this a patrimonial society. A society where wealth is crystallized, and opportunities to move up are scarce. And today, we are starting to see the same pattern emerge again.

We are witnessing worrying signs of low intergenerational mobility. Intergenerational mobility measures how strongly parents' wealth is linked to their children's future. When the index is zero, there is full mobility. Where you were born doesn't predict where you'll end up. But as the index moves toward one, mobility disappears. Your parents' wealth becomes your financial destiny. This single number tells us whether a society rewards effort or inheritance. Intergenerational mobility in the United States makes one think painfully clear: the myth of the land of opportunity is breaking down. A country once defined by the idea that a generation could climb higher than the last now shows extremely high levels of dependence between parents and children. This is not just an American phenomenon. The same pattern appears in some of the wealthiest countries in Europe.

The result of these dynamics is a society that becomes progressively more rigid. Opportunities harden, movement slows. Economic classes begin to resemble inherited positions rather than earned outcomes. In other words, a society drifting away from meritocracy and toward dynasties, surnames, and inherited influence. Influence that then, as now, was not operating behind the scenes but openly in full view of everyone. Grand staircases, big parties, silk dresses, entire neighborhoods designed to signal status. Countless indicators tell us that we are entering a period like this once again.

But this is where history becomes useful, not as a warning, but as a guide. By looking at what happened in the past, we can understand which forces were able to reverse extreme inequality and which ones failed. It is learning what worked back then so we can understand what might still work today to bring inequality back to more moderate and sustainable levels. During the Gilded Age, America experienced unprecedented industrial growth alongside extreme inequality. Industrial magnets, the so-called robber barons, amassed enormous fortunes while millions of workers and immigrants lived in harsh and precarious conditions. The gap in equal opportunity was not abstract. It was visible in everyday life. The wealthy lived with clean water and private doctors. The poor slept in overcrowded tenements, worked 12-hour factory shifts, and sent their children to work instead of school. In a society marked by such extremes of wealth and deprivation, the first wave of protests began to emerge, both in the United States and in Europe. In the US, workers organized into labor unions and launched more than 10,000 strikes during the 1880s alone in a desperate attempt to secure safer conditions, fairer wages, and a measure of dignity. Populist movements began to rise. Early forms of social legislation started to appear, from Germany's welfare programs in the 1880s to growing debates over how wealth itself should be taxed across both sides of the Atlantic. A sharp perception had taken hold, and unchecked inequality was no longer just unfair; it was a threat to social stability. That realization paved the way for a wave of progressive reforms designed to rein in the excesses of the Gilded Age.

And the reforms that would actually succeed in containing the explosion of inequality can be traced back to three core pillars. The first major reform arrived in 1913 with the introduction of the federal income tax. For the first time, the United States gained the constitutional power to tax income directly and progressively. Those who earned more would pay more, a principle that would later become standard across most Western economies. Just 3 years later, the US introduced the estate tax, designed to curb extreme concentration of wealth by taxing large inheritances. The estate tax is a levy on the assets wealth individuals leave behind at death, and European countries adopted similar inheritance or estate taxes as tools to promote greater equality. The third major mechanism used to address inequality was the taxation of capital gains, the profits earned from selling stocks, real estate, and other investments. Unlike wages or business income, capital gains accrue primarily to the wealthy, meaning their taxation can have a powerful impact on the concentration of wealth.

But these fiscal measures would reach their true peak a generation later. During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt confronted a new crisis of inequality. The Revenue Act of 1935, often referred to as the Wealth Tax, introduced a new top marginal income tax rate of 75% on incomes above $1 million. And Europe was moving in a similar direction. The Roosevelt era in the United States was therefore not an exemption, but part of a broader international trend. Governments used the tax code alongside regulation to rein in the richest, strengthen the middle class, and reduce the extreme inequalities that had defined the preceding decades.

But even if taxation can be a functional tool, one that worked in the past and is still widely supported by economists all around the world, this doesn't mean it has never been easy to implement. Taxing great wealth and barrier incomes has always been difficult. Then as now, policymakers face a set of persistent challenges when trying to make the richest pay more. One of the major factors that makes the implementation of wealth taxes so difficult is the phenomenon of capital flight and the widespread use of tax havens. In a globalized economy, wealth can move across borders. When taxes on the rich rise, there is a risk that the wealthy will relocate themselves, or more often their money, to lower-tax jurisdictions. European experience shows that overly aggressive wealth taxes often backfired. At one point in 1990, 12 countries in Europe had a wealth tax, but by 2019, only three still did, largely because the wealthy found ways to avoid them or shifted assets abroad. France's attempted solidarity wealth tax, for instance, led to many millionaires moving to Belgium or other nations, prompting France to repeal the tax. In short, taxing wealth in one country is difficult if others offer a tax haven, requiring international coordination to be truly effective.

A second major factor regards tax avoidance and loopholes. The ultra-rich can hire the best lawyers and accountants to minimize their tax exposure. Complex tax codes invariably contain loopholes or gray areas that skilled professionals exploit through trusts or shell companies. Clever accounting history provides clear examples also for this. After Roosevelt hiked up income taxes in 1935, many wealthy people used loopholes in the tax code to dodge the new rates, leading to further reforms in 1937. The game of cat and mouse meant that simply enacting a tax is often not enough. Governments must continually update laws and enforcement to close avoidance schemes.

And finally, the most unexpected factor: public opinion. There is often cultural resistance to new taxes on wealth. In some societies, notably in the United States, taxation beyond a certain level is viewed with skepticism, and arguments against wealth taxes find broad popular support, even among people who wouldn't pay them. The most common objection is that taxes on estates or large gifts amount to double taxation. The reasoning goes that individuals pay income and other taxes as they earn money. So taxing their remaining wealth at death, or taxing investment income on top of corporate tax, seems unjust. And so, even in egalitarian-minded Europe, proposals for new wealth and higher estate taxes encounter heavy pushback. For example, on November 2025, Switzerland held a national referendum on whether to introduce a federal tax on very large inheritances and lifetime gifts. The proposal would have applied a 50% tax on assets exceeding 50 million Swiss francs, creating for the first time a nationwide levy on extreme concentration of wealth. But the outcome was clear. Around 78% of voters rejected the proposal, and it was defeated in every single canton.

Economists don't argue that wealth should disappear. They argue that without limits on inheritance, asset accumulation, and rents, wealth will inevitably concentrate generation after generation. But inequality is not, by definition, an anomaly. Across history, every complex society has produced differences in income, in wealth, in status. Complete equality has never really existed, and most societies have learned to live with a certain degree of imbalance. The presence of inequality alone, then, is not enough to explain whether a society is fair or unfair. But there is a fundamental difference between a society where people arrive at different outcomes and one where they begin from very different starting points. A difference between unequal results and unequal access to opportunity. As long as education, work, and effort can still change someone's trajectory, inequality is often perceived as legitimate. But when access to opportunity itself becomes predictable, when background, family, and inherited resources quietly shape the path ahead, something starts to shift. And that's where this stops being abstract because, at some point, it becomes personal.

But now I'm curious to know how you see it. Does it feel like effort still matters, or do you feel like outcomes are increasingly decided much earlier, before individual choices really have a chance to matter? Let me know here in the comments. That's all for today. If you haven't already, please remember to subscribe to the channel, and if you want to know when the next video will come out, turn on the notification bell. Till next time, from Vision Economy.