Harder to get rich heirs to work: Thomas Piketty

When you are the inheritor of a fortune, why work hard? That seems to be the primary conundrum for many wealthy families, according to economist Thomas Piketty.

At one of his sessions at the Times Lit Fest 2015, Piketty, renowned for his work on wealth and income inequality, admitted that more and more, prosperity was being inherited than earned.

How will this influence the inheritors' attitude towards money? Piketty said, "Well, it's harder to get them to work. That's for sure. So that's a problem for the society. That's a problem for the parents sometimes."

He went on to argue that in these cases, a tax on the super-rich might have a positive outcome. "Sometimes, the parents may have an easier time if you had to tax the inheritance much more," Piketty said.