How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?
by Thom Hartmann <div><br /></div><div>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 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."
