America was founded as a meritocracy.
Letting people rise, and fall, based on their own actions, is the key to our success.
The Gilded Age families of the 19th century, the Astors and Vanderbilts, are forgotten now because their wealth and power have dissipated. Anderson Cooper may be famous, but he’s not wealthy, even though his mother was a Vanderbilt heiress.
But during the late 20th century, political decisions, many involving tax law, have given us a new ruling class.
There is no better example than The New York Times.
A.G. Sulzberger is the publisher of the Times. His father was publisher of the Times. So was his father and grandfather before him. They’re the descendants of Adolph Ochs, who bought the Times in 1896. A.G. Sulzberger is the fifth in his hereditary line. I call him Sulzberger V.
This should not have been possible, save for the Times’ dual-share structure. The family controls the company without owning it, thanks to Class B “voting stock” that outvotes all other shares.
There is no democracy at The New York Times. There is not even corporate democracy. The Sulzberger family rules the company the way the Bourbon Kings ruled France.
Why, then, should the Times cut liberals a break? Liberal capitalism threatens their very existence. Taxes on wealth and corporate democracy make it possible for such families to fall, as the Vanderbilts did, back among the hoi polloi.
Thumbs on the Scale
The political move to dump inheritance taxes, which opponents called “death taxes,” now makes dynastic wealth common. Many NFL teams are now owned by people who had nothing to do with creating or building them. They’re just lucky enough to have inherited them. We thus give billions of dollars in tax money to people like Mark Davis, Arthur Rooney, and Clark Hunt, building stadiums for sports teams they merely inherited.
Unearned wealth leads people to support unearned power. Inherited money rejects the struggle that made America great because it threatens them. Inherited wealth funded the Teneo Network that now threatens to destroy our system.
Sulzberger is just the tip of a very big feudal iceberg. The fact is that, during the 20th century, America’s system was skewed away from merit and toward dynastic wealth.
If you don’t want your grandchildren ruled by today’s heirs and Barrons, you should consider doing something about that.
