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."
Unfortunately, many Americans believe our nation was founded exclusively of, by, and for "rich white men," and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the super-rich. They would have us believe that the Constitution's signers didn't really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government.
Full story is at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0418-21.htm
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How Rich Is Too Rich For Democracy?
Posted on Saturday, May 14 at 10:28 by CalumnyContributed By
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I would submit that since the American constitution can be changed it would be in the interest of protecting American democracy for their country to hold a citizens forum much like this article describes and make amendments for just such provisions. A good starting place would be to ban all lobby groups, including any for nonprofit groups, labour, and any special interest group, etc., as these undermine a representative democracy by allowing nonvoting legal entities to distort the will of the people.
Another consideration would be provisions to make corporations answerable not only to their shareholders but to citizens in general. In other words, their performance has to be judged by more than how much profit they make. Citizens (not government) would have to be given provisions to force a corporation to be disbanded if determined to be acting against the pubic interest.
A third important safeguard not talked about in the article is to guard against any concentrated ownership of any form of news media. This is especially important given the special place that the media plays in conveying information and opinion to the general public. What's the old saying, the first thing you do in a coup is to take over all the newspapers and TV and radio stations. Looking at the corporate concentration of such in the US who generally represent conservative economic policies, it's not much of a leap to make an argument that such a coup is already well under way (no less true for Canada).
I definitely agree with the articles recommendations for the reinstutions of estate taxes and I believe their solution is very reasonable.
All of the above recommendations should be adopted in Canada as well and it is important that these be conducted at the citizen level and not government representatives. A lot of us Canadians have personally seen the petty squabbling, childishness, and backroom politics that went on with our own constitution.