Swell Times for America's Swollen Fortunes

Tuesday, 22 January 2013 09:46 
By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much | Op-Ed 

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.

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.