Bernie Sanders Is as Radical as Teddy Roosevelt

By John Nichols TODAY 5:58 PM

Excerpt:

To the extent that Roosevelt was a radical, and many called him that, his was the radicalism of an American experiment that at its best erred toward equality and the pursuit of the common good as opposed to privilege and exercise of self-interest.

The same can be said of Bernie Sanders, as he proposes a progressive estate tax on the fortunes of the top 0.2 percent of Americans. The senator from Vermont’s newly-introduced “For the 99.8% Act” would collect $2.2 trillion from 588 billionaires.

What is notable about the Sanders plan is that, with his proposal to establish a 77 percent tax on the value of an estate above $1 billion, the senator is merely seeking “a return to the top rate from 1941 through 1976.”

Sanders is proposing an approach that renews American values, as notes University of California—Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez. “The estate tax was a key pillar of the progressive tax revolution that the United States ushered one century ago. It prevented self-made wealth from turning into inherited wealth and helped make America more equal,” explains Saez. “However, the estate tax is dying of neglect, as tax avoidance schemes are multiplying and left unchallenged. As wealth concentration is surging in the United States, it is high time to revive the estate tax, plug the loopholes, and make it more progressive. Senator Sanders’ bill is a bold and welcome leap forward in this direction.”

Teddy Roosevelt understood this economic calculus, and this democratic imperative.

“In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next,” the former Republican president explained in 1910. “One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-progressive-estate-tax-teddy-roosevelt/