Who Voted To Make Rich People Richer?

People voted for Pres. Donald J. Trump to stop perpetual warfare, fix healthcare, cut federal waste, and keep men out of the Ladies Room. No one voted to help the ultra wealthy!

Teddy Roosevelt advocated the Estate Tax

Ed Note: On 7/1/2025, the U.S. Senate approved the House proposal described below re. the estate tax. It increases by 7.2% the exemption for paying the tax, and makes the exemption, which is indexed to inflation, permanent. The agreement now goes back to the House for approval.

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The Federal Reserve says the top one percent of American households own $22.19 trillion of the nation’s wealth, an increase of 422% since 2000, and an increase of 1,168% since 1989.

Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans own a paltry, combined total of $4 trillion of the nation’s wealth.

I’ve been writing about wealth inequality for years, and it literally gets worse every year, regardless of which political party is in power.

Now Pres. Trump has proposed what he is calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB). He claims it “delivers the largest middle-and working-class tax cut in U.S. history. The President’s legislation will put more than $10,000 a year back in the pockets of typical, hardworking families.”

Trump neglects to mention that the BBB also delivers for the ultra-wealthy.

Americans for Tax Fairness, a Washington, D.C., non-profit that works to promote a fair tax system, sent a letter to the Senate last week complaining the BBB will give the top one percent of wealthy individuals an average $65,000 tax cut, and the top 0.1% will get $252,000, while most families will get about a dollar a day.

The Estate Tax

One way the rich get richer is through the estate tax.

Trump’s BBB establishes a permanent estate tax that applies to only the largest 0.1 % of estates (estimated by The New York Times at one in 1,000).

The estate tax, which is levied when property is transferred at death, was enacted in 1916 to address growing inequality as the economy transitioned from an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy. Huge fortunes were being made by a few industrialists. The estate tax was intended to ensure they contributed their fair share.

Here’s what President Teddy Roosevelt had to say about the tax in 1910:

“[T]he swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes … increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

The first estate tax applied when the value of the estate exceeded the exemption amount of $50,000, and the rate of taxation ranged from one to ten percent.

Fast forward… During Trump’s first term as president, the U.S. Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) which temporarily increased the estate tax exemption to $10 million, indexed for inflation.

Taking into account inflation, the estate tax exemption currently is $13.99 million per individual and $27.98 million for married couples. The estate tax rate ranges from 18% to 40%.

Now here’s the kicker.

The TCJA is due to expire at the end of 2025, at which time the estate tax exemption will revert to pre-2018 levels of $5.9 million per individual and $10.98 million for married couples.

Seeing the approaching train wreck for wealthy Americans, GOP leaders in April proposed the Death Tax Repeal Act to eliminate the estate tax altogether, ostensibly to benefit family farms. This didn’t pass.

The U.S. House of Representatives in May approved H.R. 1, Section 110006, as part of the BBB, which permanently sets the “base estate tax” at $15 million for individuals beginning Dec. 31, 2025, indexed for inflation starting in 2026. Th rate of taxation is unchanged.

Technically, the House has more than doubled the estate tax exemption, though it is only a 7.2 % increase over the current, expiring estate tax.

The House bill is currently being considered by the U.S. Senate and could be altered.

Rewards

You don’t have to be poor to think that extreme wealth inequality in the United States is a problem.