The Wealth Gap and the 'Prince' of Industry
A biting editorial critiques the concentration of inherited wealth and the limitations of modern tax policies.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Young Mr. Rockefeller must have concocted the inheritance tax provision in the new tariff bill. Study the following provisions: A tax of one per cent on direct inheritance of $10,000 to $100,000; two per cent on $100,000 to $500,000; three per cent on $500,000 or over, and five per cent on amounts over $500,000 willed to collateral relatives or strangers. Most fair-minded people will agree that taxing a man or his estate simply as a matter of revenue is of the nature of imposing a fine on success. Some higher, broader object or principle ought to be involved. One of the curses of our time is the concentration of great wealth. What is the sense in our bragging about the abolishment of king rule and the power that goes with titles by birth, when vast wealth sways things as it does in this country? Young Rockefeller is not called a prince, but with the tremendous fortune that may descend to him he may do and get all that any prince by 'divine right' ever could, save that he must satisfy himself by cutting off our oil and other necessities of life instead of our heads.
“What is the sense in our bragging about the abolishment of king rule... when vast wealth sways things as it does in this country?”
This 1909 editorial sounds remarkably like contemporary debates regarding the 'gilded age' wealth gap and the influence of dynastic fortunes. The argument that concentrated wealth acts as a de facto monarchy remains a central theme in modern discourse on economic inequality in Tacoma and beyond.
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