UFE and Responsible Wealth have held many press events featuring remarkable guest speakers from varying walks of life and work. Many of those speakers are wealthy individuals who have been, or will be, affected by the estate tax. But, they all have at least one thing in common – passionate support for the estate tax, because of what it represents: the common good and opportunity for all Americans.
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- Anna Burger, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU |
"Consider a wealthy family with two children. Under the [2009] law, each child could inherit $3.5 million, tax free. That means each child would receive more, tax free, than the average worker would earn in two lifetimes. And the worker would be paying taxes on their earnings. Each of these children would receive more, tax-free, than 240 minimum wage workers would receive in a year."|
- John C. Bogle, Founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group |
"[P]assing a stronger estate tax is a matter of ethics, of responsibility, of pride in citizenship, and it's the right fiscal choice for our country...I don't ever forget, as do some of my colleagues, that I benefited from a lot of business incentives and tax laws as I was building Vanguard Group to what it is today, and I owe some of that back."|
- Abigail Disney, Filmmaker, philanthropist & heiress to the Disney fortune |
“My family achieved success not in spite of, but because of the American system of taxation. After all, without reliable and safe roads there’d have been no Disneyland; without high functioning legal systems and a well regulated business environment there would have been no copyright protection for Mickey Mouse.”|
- Dave Eiffert, Co-founder and Co-owner of Snoqualmie Falls Brewery |
"People who accumulate substantial wealth have not done so alone. They have benefited from the labor of employees and have built their businesses using public infrastructure such as clean water, ports, roads, utilities, and the internet. In view of these considerations, an estate tax is a responsibility which should be inescapable, and which people should be proud to pay."|
- Jerry Fiddler, Principal of Zygote Ventures & founder of Wind River Systems |
"Wind River wouldn’t have existed without government-funded research that I did at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. I wouldn’t have gotten that job at the lab if I hadn’t had a master’s degree. I wouldn’t have had a master’s or a bachelor’s degree if there weren’t a public university that provided me with financial aid. And if I hadn’t gone to a good high school, also public, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into the university...Indeed, it will give me great pride to repay [society], hopefully many-fold, through the estate tax."|
- Bill Gates, Sr., Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |
"No one accumulates a fortune without the help of our society's investments. How much wealth would exist without America's unique property rights protections, public infrastructure, and academic institutions? We should celebrate the estate tax as an 'economic opportunity recycling' program, where previous generations made investments for us and now it's our turn to pass on the gift. Strengthening the estate tax is important to our democracy."|
- Jean Gordon, Co-owner of Frostyaire of Arkansas |
"At Frostyaire, our decisions about hiring employees, purchasing equipment, and expanding the business are not based on tax policy...The best way to help small businesses like ours is to put more money in the hands of the middle class who will spend the money as customers of our businesses, rather than cutting the estate tax to ensure that very wealthy heirs can have a larger inheritance."|
- Julian Robertson, Founder of Tiger Fund |
“It seems to me that the least deserving recipients of wealth are inheritors. Further, there are many indications that inheritors often have trouble adjusting to their unearned inheritance. An inheritance tax would de facto help remedy this.”|
- Richard Rockefeller, MD, Family Physician & great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller |
"The Rockefeller fortune could never have been created without the foundation of public laws, public education and infrastructure which undergirded American industry in my great-grandfather’s time and continues to do so today. Therefore, far from resenting our tax system, which allows this infrastructure to remain strong, I believe that a strong estate tax makes perfect sense."|
- Robert Rubin, Former U.S. Secretary of Treasury |
"Our country is on an unsustainable fiscal path. A progressive estate tax can...fund deficit reduction, additional public investment, or added assistance to those affected by the economic crisis...Our nation has always held itself out as a meritocracy and a land of opportunity, and an estate tax helps avoid accumulation of inherited economic and political power that is antithetical to this historical vision of our society.”|
- John Russell, Owner of Russell Development Company |
"I’ve been reasonably successful...I own and manage six office buildings and have some 50 people working for me, directly or indirectly. Would I say that I did it without public support? No. When I reflect on what helped my business succeed and grow, I owe quite a bit to public investments, including tax policies that help make the real estate industry lucrative."|
- Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO |
"Our economy remains on the edge of a double-dip recession, and we urgently need to create millions of jobs and invest in our future, not give more tax breaks to the wealthy. Anyone who pretends to care about cutting deficits while opposing the restoration of the estate tax is clearly residing on a different planet."We thank all of our guest speakers for their commitment to tax fairness.
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