We, the People, call Morris Pearl for his testimony. Pearl’s net worth was estimated in 2023 to be about $50 million.
His testimony comes from “Tax The Rich How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make The Rich Even Richer.”
Pearl: “”I..[want]…to challenge my fellow millionaires to get their heads out of the sand. You are destroying the country…
I’ve got a message – a warning..for my fellow rich people…You cannot continue to sit by and enjoy your riches while the rest of the world falls further into poverty and chaos. We have seen the results of gross inequality over and over again. Reread your history books. Dysfunctional societies don’t end well for rich people either.”…..
History is riddled with examples of what happens when too many have too little and too few have too much..I’m talking about a revolution. America’s millionaires should know..during the 2016 election, 81% of Trump supporters and 79% of Bernie Sanders supporters said the country needed a political revolution.”
Pearl: “I want to ask my fellow millionaires, Do you really think you can protect yourself from mobs of angry, hungry people? So did King Louis XVI and Czar Nicholas II. You may believe this time is different.”….
”I don’t feel being guilty about being rich..I would recommend it to anyone. And I don’t consider myself any more altruistic than the next person. I’m just as greedy as every other rich person I know. I’m just greedy for a different kind of country than a lot of other rich people are.
”I’m greedy for a country with a basic sense of fairness for me and my family to live in…I want to live in a country with lots of rich people and a huge middle class, and I happen to believe..lessening inequality by taxing rich people is the only way to create that kind of country.
Pearl: “Taxing our richest citizens is not the only thing we have to do..but it is not optional. Think of it as entirely necessary… So I plan to do everything I can to ensure we tax people like me as substantially and effectively as possible.
I don’t want to be a rich man in a poor country… I don’t want to live in a country with a few extraordinarily wealthy people and millions of poor people…I don’t want to live behind barbed-wire fences. I don’t want to ride around in a bulletproof car with a trained security guard. I don’t want to worry that my children or grandchildren are going to get kidnapped, or worse.”…
Pearl: “..I’m not alone. Ten years ago, with a few dozen other millionaires, I signed a open letter to America’s leaders to protest the extension of the Bush tax cuts for people like us with incomes of over $l million a year and/or assets of at least $5 million. Since then, this group of “Patriotic Millionaires” has grown to over two hundred people from thirty-three states.”…
”At the time we released our initial letter, the disparity between..rich and..poor in America was highest it had been in a hundred years..reached a point..history proved was really problematic. It has only gotten worse..inequality continuing to rise even faster, destabilizing our society and eroding the foundation that..kept us strong for so long. We decided to focus our attention there, on the cancerous inequality at the center of our shared experience.”
Pearl: ”The tax system was our first target. but we expanded our fight beyond tax policy to include two other areas ..essential for our long-term stability and prosperity: first, a top-to-bottom reform of our political system to limit the power of millionaires in our lawmaking [starting with taking a hatchet to our corrupt campaign-finance system],..and second, a reset of our wage and labor laws to ensure..working people, including those in the new “gig” economy, are guaranteed a fair share of the proceeds of business and paid a wage they can actually survive on
”If we achieve all our goals – higher taxes on millionaires, equal political representation for all Americans, and a living wage for working people – we will become a more equal and more stable nation over time..a more prosperous nation overall as well..”
Pearl: ”..there are still quite a few things standing in our way, not the least among them several thousand millionaires who totally disagree with us. but we know the game – the lobbyists, the loopholes, and the lies…We know..if you look closely at the tax code, you will see nothing but layers upon layers of corruption and campaign contributions….because a lot of politicians actually want you to be confused. the less the average person knows about taxes, the easier it is for the rich and powerful to rig the system in their favor.”
Pearl: ‘ I’m proud to be called a “traitor to my class.”..I don’t want to live in a country where people can funnel their income through fake Irish corporations to cut their tax bill..a nation where investors like me have lower tax rates than people who need to work for a living have..a nation where children like mine..receive millions of dollars in inheritances tax free..I don’t want to continue to pay low taxes into a system that ensures rich investors like me will get richer and richer while the middle class gets smaller and the poor get even more desperate. And I don’t want to live in a system where my fellow millionaires are able to do all those things with impunity.”
With Justice For All 