Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Wealth and Our Commonwealth Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes by William H. Gates Sr. Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes by William H. Gates Sr. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 658ee88bf9e0c41a • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Wealth and Our Commonwealth. The ‘Man Bites Dog’ story of over 1,000 high net-worth individuals who rose up to protest the repeal of the estate tax made headlines everywhere last year. Central to the organization of what Newsweek tagged the ‘billionaire backlash’ were two visionaries: Bill Gates, Sr., cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest foundation on earth, and Chuck Collins, cofounder of United for a Fair Economy and Responsible Wealth, and the great-grandson of meat packer Oscar Mayer who gave away his substantial inheritance at the age of twenty-six. Gates and Collins argue that individual wealth is a product not only of hard work and smart choices but of the society that provides the fertile soil for success. They don‘t subscribe to the ‘Great Man’ theory of wealth creation but contend that society‘s investments, such as economic development, education, health care, and property rights protection, all contribute to any individual‘s good fortune. With the repeal proposed by the Bush administration, we might be facing the future that Teddy Roosevelt feared—where huge fortunes amassed and untaxed would evolve into a dangerous and permanent aristocracy. Repeal would drop federal revenues $294 billion in the first 10 years; 27 some $750 billion would be lost in the second decade, not to mention that the U.S. Treasury estimates that charitable contributions would drop by $6 billion a year. But what about all those modest families that would lose the farm? Gates and Collins expose the fallacy of this argument, pointing out that this is largely a myth and that the very same lobbies and politicians who are crying ‘cows’ have opposed other legislation that would actually have helped small farmers. Weaving in personal narratives, history, and plenty of solid economic sense, Gates and Collins make a sound and compelling case for tax reform, not repeal. Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes by William H. Gates Sr. AKA William Henry Gates, Sr. Born: 30-Nov-1925 Birthplace: Bremerton, WA Died: 14-Sep-2020 Cause of death: unspecified. Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Philanthropist. Nationality: United States Executive summary: Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Military service: US Army (WWII, discharged 1946) Wife: Mary Maxwell Gates (b. 5-Jul-1929, d. 9-Jun-1994, two daughters, one son) Daughter: Kristianne ("Kristi") Son: Bill Gates (software billionare, b. 28-Oct-1955) Daughter: Libby Wife: Mimi Gardner Gates (museum director, m. 1996) Author of books: Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes ( 2003 , with Chuck Collins) William H. Gates, Sr. William Henry "Bill" Gates (born William Henry Gates II ; November 30, 1925), also known publicly as Bill Gates Sr. , is a retired American attorney and philanthropist and author of the book Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime . He is the father of Microsoft co- founder Bill Gates. One of a line of businessmen named William H. Gates, and sometimes called William Gates Jr. in his career, he is now generally known as William Henry Gates Sr. due to the greater prominence of his son William H. Gates III (Bill Gates). Contents. Life and career [ edit | edit source ] Gates was born in 1925 in Bremerton, Washington, to William Henry Gates I or Sr. (1891 – 1969) and Lillian Elizabeth Rice (1891 – 1966); the couple had married in 1913. [1] His paternal grandmother was German and his maternal grandmother was English, and he was apparently the third William Henry Gates, despite being named the second. [2] Gates was an active member of a Boy Scout troop for several years, and earned the Eagle Scout Award in 1941. After high school he enlisted in the United States Army, changing his name to William Gates Jr. to avoid the appearance of elitism. [3] He fought in World War II and was honorably discharged in November 1946. He attended the University of Washington (UW) under the G.I. Bill, where he earned a B.A. in 1949 and a law degree in 1950. While at Washington he joined the Chi Psi Fraternity. He co-founded Shidler & King in 1964, which later became Preston Gates & Ellis LLP. He practiced with the firm until 1998, and the firm was merged into the firm now known as K&L Gates (Bill Gates Sr. is not affiliated with the firm). Gates also served on the board of Planned Parenthood. [4] [5] In 1998, Gates retired from PGE. He currently [ citation needed ] serves on the Board of Regents for the University of Washington, and is a co- chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which his son Bill and his daughter-in-law Melinda founded. He has served as a director for Costco Wholesale, a bulk retail corporation, since 2003. He is also a founding co-chair of the Pacific Health Summit. [6] He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself from his more famous son. Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes , a defense of the policies promoted by the estate tax. [7] [8] He married Mary Maxwell Gates (b. 1929), whom he met at UW, and they remained married until she died in 1994. They had three children: Kristianne, Bill, and Libby. In 1996 Gates married Mimi Gardner Gates (b.1943), who was the director of the Seattle Art Museum. World Justice Project [ edit | edit source ] William H. Gates Sr. serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity. Wealth and Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. When the father of the world’s richest individual and the cofounder of an outfit called United for a Fair Economy get together to write a defense of the estate tax, the result is one of the worst books ever written in American history about a public-policy issue. Although Gates and Collins have written a tract that pays lip service to individual achievement, liberty, and free enterprise—the foundations of America’s prosperity—they nevertheless embrace egalitarianism, the redistribution of wealth, and the welfare state as indispensable policies and institutions. Moreover, in their passion to maintain the estate tax, they assert that it “helps make America great.” This is the first time, to my knowledge, that anyone has argued that this tax has been partly responsible for the American people’s prosperity since 1916, when the federal tax was instituted. The authors’ defense of the tax rests on several dubious assertions, to say the least. They claim that the estate tax will reduce the “concentration of wealth and power” in the United States; forces individuals of great wealth to “pay back society” for the enormous “investment” in our public institutions; strengthens “equal opportunity” in our society by putting a “brake on the accumulation of hereditary wealth”; will reduce the disparity in income levels that is so corrosive to democracy; will “level” the playing field, so that “runners start at the same starting line”; is a good tax, because “for us, the progressivity of the tax system is a core principle”; provides an incentive to charitable giving. Without the estate tax, wealthy families would reduce their charitable contributions. They also argue that the three great religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—support the tax. They contend that it must be maintained because, after all, “taxes are a privilege in a democratic society, a necessary component for sustaining the common good.” Gates and Collins repeat ad nauseam that the “concentration of wealth and power” is a grave threat to the Republic. They argue, for example, that “fewer than ten multinational media conglomerates dominate the American mass media landscape.” So what? Americans are tuning out network broadcasting and turning to cable and the Internet, the latest frontier of information freedom. In reality, it is the concentration of political power in Washington that is undermining the American people’s natural rights and prosperity. Taxes, monetary debasement, regulations, trade restrictions, out-of-control spending, overseas military adventures, and the military-industrial complex have eroded any chance of a sustainable prosperity. The authors believe that the wealth of the “rich” could not have been created without the “investment” made by governments at all levels, particularly the federal government. In fact, the creators of wealth pay for so-called public services throughout their lifetimes in the form of income, sales, property, excise, and other taxes. Why should the federal government also confiscate up to 50 percent or more of their estates when they depart this world? How much is enough for the federal Leviathan? Another of the authors’ assertions, namely, that the estate tax will increase “equal opportunity” at birth is simply ludicrous.