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It’s widely recognized that vast amounts of wealth are now concentrated in the hands of the very few. But less well understood, scholar Ray Madoff argues, is how the U.S. tax code played a key role in that process. She delineates how progressive taxation and the estate tax — designed to tax the inherited wealth of the rich — have been eviscerated. And she also argues that philanthropy, perversely, has increased the wealth of the 1%.

Ray D. Madoff, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy University of Chicago Press, 2025

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

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