I grew up in the affluent Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, but I assumed my family was merely upper middle class. I went to school with Kathy Iacocca, the daughter of Lee Iacocca, and Bill Taubman, the son of Sotheby’s Alfred Taubman. They came to school in chauffeur-driven cars, whereas my dad drove his own car.

I have a memory, though, of the Detroit riots happening when I was 7. I would look at the pictures in Life; that was my window onto the wider world. I would think, “There is something wrong here that has to do with the gap between those with money and everyone else.”

In my 20s, I worked with nonprofits focusing on affordable housing in Worcester, Mass. I once met with 15 working-class families who were trying to buy the apartment building where they lived. They were trying to figure out how to take on second jobs and sell their cars to raise $10,000 in 30 days to make the down payment. I realized I could just write a check and these people would not have to make these sacrifices.

I did not give them that check, but very shortly after that, I did write a check—and gave my $500,000 inheritance to a couple of foundations. Someone recently pointed out that if I had held onto the money, I would have $6 million today, and think of what I could do with that. I say, “Think of what it did then.” If you cross the class line with an open heart, and you do not embrace an ideology that says these people get what they deserve because they have some deficiency, then it is very hard to sit on a pile of money that you didn’t earn and feel that it belongs to you.

American Apartheid
Fast forward to today. I live on my paycheck as associate director of United for a Fair Economy (UFE), a nonpartisan organization that draws attention to the dangerous consequences of growing income and wealth inequality in the United States. UFE has under its umbrella Responsible Wealth, a group I cofounded in 1997 to address ways that the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans can help others share in economic prosperity. My wife is a minister, and we have an 8-year-old who goes to public school. My beliefs stem partly from a notion of stewardship that cuts across religious denominations—that there is a social mortgage on capital. I gave away my money, but I still have the benefits of my upbringing, which includes a sense that I can make things happen.

There was a responsible wealth movement during the first Gilded Age. Andrew Carnegie and Teddy Roosevelt believed adamantly in an inheritance tax. Now, in the second Gilded Age, there seems to be a group with enormous wealth that feels almost entitled to it by birthright. The Mars family, with a net worth of more than $10 billion, is bankrolling the campaign to permanently abolish the estate tax. What are they worried about? We have a number of people who believe they are somehow better equipped to control the vast treasure than the rest of society. I think many people who hit the lottery at birth think of themselves as prime movers of society, like those depicted in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, when all they really did was win at ovarian roulette.

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.”

When you cross the class divide, you find friends whose children are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recently I went to a fund-raiser at a VFW hall to collect money to send Joe a Kevlar bulletproof vest. Where is the outrage over the inequality of sacrifice? By eliminating the estate tax, we shift the burden from deceased multimillionaires and billionaires to people who have less capacity to pay.

I am also concerned about the philanthropic sector becoming another arena of private power without any accountability as to where its money goes. The Walton family, for example, is using its foundation to influence the education-reform debate by advocating vouchers. Personally I would rather see the public school system improved, but the point is that the Waltons’ $90 billion fortune will make it possible to create a philanthropic superpower.

If we as taxpayers are going to subsidize the creation of foundations, which is essentially what we do, we should make sure they are more accountable to society. Foundations should be required to spend down all of their assets in 30 years. There should also be a requirement that a broad range of stakeholders serve on the board, rather than just family members. I realize these are radical proposals, but there must be a radical shakeup. I would prefer that the very wealthy give more to community foundations. To paraphrase J. Paul Getty, money is like manure—better when spread around.

Chuck Collins is cofounder of United for a Fair Economy and of Responsible Wealth (www.responsiblewealth.org). He is also a senior fellow at Class Action, an organization devoted to healing the wounds of America’s class divide (www.classactionnet.org). He is coauthor, with Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, and, with Felice Yeskel, of Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Insecurity and Inequality. He is now working on a book about privilege in America, Born on Third Base.