Kamala Harris’s father, Donald Harris, an eminent economics professor at prestigious Stanford University in California, was described by the Stanford Daily in 1976 as “a Marxist scholar . . . too charismatic, a pied piper leading students astray from neoclassical economics”. Dr Harris was critical of mainstream economic thinking, which for decades had argued that free markets would solve everything. Instead, he focused on the importance of income and wealth distribution, long before inequality became a hot topic.

Barack Obama and Kamala Harris come from remarkably similar intellectual lineage. Both fathers were postcolonial thinkers, the first generation of professional economists in newly independent colonies; Kenya in Obama’s case and Jamaica in Harris’s. Interestingly, both children of these postcolonial radicals have tacked to the centre, a move we observe in many families where the children find their own way, sometimes in opposition to their parents. Liberal families spawn conservatives and vice versa.

This oft-seen ambivalence towards intellectual inheritance contrasts profoundly with the far more common entitlement towards material inheritance. How many families have we seen torn apart by rows over financial succession? Inter-sibling rivalries, dormant for years, can erupt over heirlooms as brothers and sisters fall out over cash. Why do you think succession makes such great fictional material from Cain and Abel to Logan Roy?

Inheritance is not just a family affair – it’s also a critical societal issue. Should we tax inheritance to make society more equal, levelling the playing field, or is inheritance tax a malevolent posthumous penalty for an individual’s effort? After all, everyone wants to leave something behind. For many, this is the main reason for their striving, saving, planning, working constantly when they could be dossing. Many people are doing it all for their children. On the........

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