Roll this scenario out another 30 years, and we will find approximately 1 percent of the population controlling more than 50 percent of the private wealth. You have to ask yourself if you want your grandchildren to grow up in an apartheid society. Do you want them to live behind walls and ride a bulletproof Mercedes to school?
In late 2000, Bill Gates Sr. called me and said he would like to work with me on the campaign to keep the estate tax. Bill went to college and law school on the G.I. Bill. His son’s success would not have happened without the government grants to the Dartmouth researchers who created computer languages.
We have a petition signed by nearly 2,200 multimillionaires and billionaires, calling for reform, but not repeal, of the estate tax. Our position is to raise the exemptions to $2.5 million for an individual and $5 million for a couple. I would advocate a progressive rate structure that would go up to 50 percent or even higher on fortunes over $20 million. Warren Buffet has said he supports a rate of 100 percent on fortunes over $50 million. I could be persuaded to support that, because I think once you reach that level you are wielding tremendous power and influence in a democratic society.
Net Profiteers
There is something particularly unseemly about giving tax cuts to multimillionaires and billionaires in wartime; it is a move unprecedented in U.S. history. During World War II, fortunes beyond $50 million were taxed at 70 percent, as a way of conscripting wealth for the war effort. In a famous invective against war profiteering, FDR said: “I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.”
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