by AMagill
How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?
[Via CommonDreams]
At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?
It’s a debate we haven’t had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and last week, by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn’t be had again in this generation.
But it’s a debate that’s vital to the survival of democracy in America.
In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, “If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree…”
In this, he was making the same argument that the Framers of Pennsylvania tried to make when writing their constitution in 1776. As Kevin Phillips notes in his masterpiece book “Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich,” a Sixteenth Article to the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights (that was only “narrowly defeated”) declared: “an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property.”
[More]
From 2005. Many of the most famous Founding Fathers fought against the accumulation of wealth. As Hartmann wrote:
The Founders of our republic fought a war against an aristocratic, oligarchic nation, and were very clear that they didn’t want America to ever degenerate into aristocracy, oligarchy, or feudalism/fascism.
They knew that never in the history of the world had a democracy survived even a few generations. They recognized what happened when wealth claimed political prominence.
Most tried to create a system that went against their own self-interests – the interests of the wealthy.
The longer we let 1% control so much of our Republic, the more likely that it will not survive many more generations.
