Dear John,

The top 0.1% of Americans owns 14% of all the country’s wealth: $20 trillion. An increase from 9% in 1990, this is the highest proportion of wealth ever recorded for the ultra-rich.

In fact, only the top 1% of Americans have seen an increase in their percentage of the nation’s wealth since 1990 -- all the other brackets, the other 99%, have lost ground since then.

Yet, unlike income, wealth is not taxed.

As the rest of us experience a shrinking piece of the pie, the wealthiest show no social conscience. Instead, they use their dark money super PAC campaign contributions to push Republican lawmakers to seek even deeper tax cuts, while they proceed to gut the most popular social programs in the country.

Indeed, the Republicans’ new proposed budget seeks to cut $2.7 trillion from Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. These cuts are huge and shocking -- and why are they needed? Isn’t it simply because the richest of the rich want to pay even less toward the common good?

Talk about a rigged game!

The ever-increasing wealth of the wealthiest gives them the wherewithal to gather for themselves even more wealth, while seeking to rip up the social net that progressives have fought for decades to build. To fight this battle anew, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Brendan Boyle have proposed the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.

Become a grassroots co-sponsor of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act to fix the imbalances in our tax code, and require the wealthiest of households to finally pay their fair share.

The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would apply a 2% tax on the wealth of families worth more than $50 million, and a 3% tax for America’s 741 billionaires. These two brackets represent only the wealthiest 0.05% of Americans, or about 150,000 people.

With no increase in taxes for 9,995 of 10,000 households (those of us with net worth under $50 million), this legislation would bring in at least $3 trillion over the next ten years to support the common good of the nation.

We could protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts indefinitely, and start to create a better balance of wealth and influence.

Over the 2010s, while Republicans choked off IRS funding, audits of millionaires and billionaires fell by 92%. With $100 billion to enforce the tax, the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act will fund annual audits of 30% of these households worth over $50 million to prevent cheating.

Now the results of the Trump-GOP tax scam of 2017 are in: Nearly all the gains went to billionaires, as their fortunes increased to $5.2 trillion -- up 78% in just five years. With just a mere fraction of this increased wealth -- all untaxed -- they were easily able to give $1 billion dollars to Republicans who promised to cut taxes even more for the wealthy, while cutting benefits and basic rights even more for the rest of us.

Donald Trump is not the only billionaire who thinks not paying his taxes “makes me smart.” Now it’s up to the rest of us to get smart about these revenues and pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.

Thank you for your support of economic justice.

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action