MAKING THE ECONOMY WORK FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW: #8 RAISE...

MAKING THE ECONOMY WORK FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW: #8 RAISE THE
ESTATE TAX ON THE VERY RICH.

 At a time of historic economic inequality, it should be a
no-brainer to raise a tax on inherited wealth for the very rich. Yet there’s a
move among some members of Congress to abolish it altogether.

If you’re as horrified at the prospect of abolishing the estate
tax as I am, I hope you’ll watch and share the accompanying video. 

Today the estate tax reaches only the richest two-tenths of one
percent, and applies only to dollars in excess of $10.86 million for married
couples or $5.43 million for individuals. 

That means if a couple leaves to their heirs $10,860,001, they
now pay the estate tax on $1. The current estate tax rate is 40%, so that would
be 40 cents.

Yet according to these members of Congress, that’s still too
much. 

Abolishing the estate tax would give each of the wealthiest
two-tenths of 1 percent of American households an average tax cut of $3
million, and the 318 largest estates would get an average tax cut of $20
million.

It would also reduce tax revenues by $269 billion over ten
years. The result would be either larger federal deficits or higher taxes on
the rest of us to fill the gap.

This is nuts. The richest 1 percent of Americans now have 42
percent of the nation’s entire wealth, while the bottom 90 percent has just 23
percent. 

That’s the greatest concentration of wealth at the top than at any
time since the Gilded Age of the 1890s.

Instead of eliminating the tax on inherited wealth, we should
increase it – back to the level it was in the late 1990s. The economy did
wonderfully well in the late 1990s, by the way. 

Adjusted for inflation, the estate tax restored to its level in
1998 would begin to touch estates valued at $1,748,000 per couple.

That would yield approximately $448 billion over the next ten
years – way
more than enough to finance ten years of universal preschool and two free years
of community college for all eligible students.

Our democracy’s Founding Fathers did not want a privileged
aristocracy. Yet that’s the direction we’re going in. The tax on inherited
wealth is one of the major bulwarks against it. That tax should be increased
and strengthened.

It’s
time to rein in America’s surging inequality. It’s time to raise the estate
tax.