Swell Times for America’s Swollen Fortunes

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


Swell Times for America’s Swollen Fortunes
January 13, 2013

All those millions that CEOs and hedge fund managers have grabbed over recent decades? Our current tax code won’t let us grab them back.

By Sam Pizzigati


Theodore Roosevelt would not approve how easily the super rich today can perpetuate their enormous wealth accumulations.

Can a democracy survive if the richest of the rich within it can pass on to their heirs, generation after generation, the vast bulk of their fortunes?

In the United States, that question first became a top-tier topic of political debate back over a century ago. Fortunes of almost unimaginable size were then towering over the nation’s economic landscape. These huge fortunes, Americans feared, could easily become the building blocks for a new aristocracy, for financial dynasties that could leave America’s democracy a dead letter.

How could average Americans prevent that ruin? The nation needed, more and more Americans came to agree, to tax — and tax heavily — the fortunes the super rich bequeathed to their heirs. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/swollen-fortunes/