What Taxing the Rich Could Yield

[signalmankenneth]

America’s 15 wealthiest families are worth a combined $618 billion. That’s not good for our economy—or our democracy.

The New York Times investigation into the Trump family’s financial misdeeds recently revealed what had been obvious to most: The president is no self-made man. Like so many bombshell stories about the president, this story has been largely overlooked as new and more flagrant Trump indignities erupt nearly every day. Yet the tactics that the report shines a light on are hardly peculiar to the Trumps. Many wealthy families use similar tactics to stockpile their wealth and keep it from taxation that could reinvest it to meet the nation’s needs. And in doing so, these families keep building wealth with which they can wield political power.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) takes a close look at the billionaire multi-generation families who wield that power—the American dynasties. Taking their cue from the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in the United States, the report, "Billionaire Bonanza," by Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good, and Josh Hoxie, director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation, both at IPS, details how the nation’s 15 wealthiest families—some with household names (Walton, Koch, Mars), some perhaps less-known (Duncan, Bass, Stryker)—are worth a combined $618 billion.

Overwhelmingly, this is inherited money; the companies from which these families derive their wealth were all started at least a generation ago.

https://prospect.org/article/what-ta...ch-could-yield