Don't Let a Medicare Commercial Choose Your Health Insurance

Two costly mistakes to avoid and seven questions every older American should ask before changing Medicare coverage.

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

Every autumn, television viewers are bombarded with Medicare commercials promising additional benefits, lower premiums, and savings they may be missing. Friendly spokespersons urge older Americans to call immediately and speak with a "licensed insurance specialist."

But before picking up the telephone, consider a question rarely mentioned in these advertisements: Is the person answering your call helping you select the best healthcare coverage, or trying to sell you an insurance policy?

The distinction matters, particularly when your health and financial security are at stake.

What Are They Selling?

Medicare beneficiaries generally choose between Original Medicare, often supplemented by Medigap and separate prescription coverage, and Medicare Advantage, a private insurance alternative.

Medicare's October 15 through December 7 annual enrollment period allows beneficiaries to change Medicare Advantage and Part D prescription plans. Medigap has different enrollment rules.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The problem arises when complicated insurance decisions are reduced to attractive advertising promises.

Two potential mistakes deserve particular attention.

Mistake #1: Believing a $0 Premium Means Free Healthcare

Perhaps the most seductive Medicare advertising promise is the "$0 monthly premium."

It sounds wonderful, particularly for retirees living on fixed incomes. But a zero-dollar premium does not mean zero-dollar healthcare expenses.

Most Medicare Advantage beneficiaries must continue paying their Medicare Part B premiums. Depending on their plans, they may also face deductibles, specialist copayments, hospital charges, coinsurance, and prescription expenses.

Consider two hypothetical retirees.

One enrolls in a zero-premium Medicare Advantage plan. Healthy today, that person enjoys lower monthly insurance expenses. But an unexpected illness requiring hospitalization, rehabilitation, and repeated specialist visits could produce substantial medical bills.

Another retiree pays higher monthly premiums for Original Medicare supplemented by Medigap. Although the regular insurance expense is greater, that individual may face substantially lower out-of-pocket costs for Medicare-covered treatment.

Medicare Advantage plans have annual out-of-pocket limits for covered Part A and Part B services, but those limits do not include every healthcare expense.

Neither insurance arrangement is automatically superior.

The real question is not what your insurance costs when you are healthy. It is what your insurance could cost when you become seriously ill.

Before changing plans, calculate your potential annual expenses, not merely your monthly premium.

Mistake #2: Surrendering Insurance You May Never Recover

The second mistake can be even more consequential.

Imagine someone who has Original Medicare and a Medigap policy. Attracted by advertisements promising additional benefits and lower premiums, that person switches to Medicare Advantage and cancels the supplemental policy.

A year or two later, circumstances change. A serious illness develops, a trusted specialist is outside the plan's network, or the beneficiary simply wants greater flexibility in choosing physicians.

Returning to Original Medicare may be possible during an applicable enrollment period.

Recovering the Medigap protection previously surrendered is another matter entirely.

Outside certain guaranteed-issue protections, insurance companies may be permitted to review medical histories, charge higher premiums, or deny applications altogether.

Federal law provides some protections, including a 12-month trial right for certain first-time Medicare Advantage enrollees. Individual states may provide additional rights.

But these protections are not universal.

Someone who abandons a Medigap policy without understanding the consequences could discover that returning to comparable supplemental coverage is difficult, expensive, or impossible.

Before canceling existing Medigap insurance, determine whether you have a guaranteed right to obtain comparable coverage again. Get that information in writing.

Recognizing the Sales Pitch

Not every insurance representative is dishonest. Many licensed agents provide valuable assistance.

Nevertheless, consumers should recognize warning signs: exaggerated promises, pressure to enroll immediately, repeated emphasis on free benefits, or reluctance to explain coverage restrictions.

A licensed insurance agent is not necessarily an independent adviser. Agents may receive commissions and may represent only certain insurers.

Medicare prohibits misleading marketing and pressuring beneficiaries to enroll before they are ready.

You are entitled to ask questions, request documentation, and take time to decide.

Seven Questions to Ask Before Changing Coverage

Before agreeing to any new Medicare plan, ask the representative:

1.     Who do you represent? Are you independent, and how many insurance companies and plans can you compare?

2.     How are you compensated? Will you receive a commission if I enroll, and does compensation differ among plans?

3.     Can I keep my doctors and hospitals? Are my physicians, specialists, and preferred hospitals covered under this specific plan?

4.     What will my prescriptions cost? What are my estimated annual expenses based on my medications, dosages, and preferred pharmacy?

5.     What could I actually pay each year? Include premiums, deductibles, copayments, coinsurance, and applicable out-of-pocket limits.

6.     What restrictions will I encounter? Will I need referrals, prior authorizations, or approval for treatment outside a provider network?

7.     What happens if I change my mind? Can I return to my previous coverage, particularly Medigap, without medical underwriting or higher premiums?

Do not authorize enrollment until you understand the answers.

For independent assistance, visit Medicare.gov, call 1-800-MEDICARE, or contact your state's free State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP).

The best Medicare coverage is not necessarily the plan with the lowest advertised premium or the longest list of benefits. It is the coverage that protects your health, preserves access to necessary medical care, and fits your financial circumstances.

Your healthcare is too important to be decided by a television commercial.

Resources:

Medicare.gov  - General marketing rules for Medicare health and drug plans
https://www.medicare.gov/health-drug-plans/health-plans/your-coverage-options/plan-marketing-rules

Medicare.gov – LearnHow Medigap Works
https://www.medicare.gov/health-drug-plans/medigap/basics/how-medigap-works

 

A New American Compact

Amending the Constitution can create a future that is more equitable, accountable and verdant.

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

The first six articles pointed to a common conclusion: America's ideals are strong, its enforcement uneven, and its mechanisms of repair rusted. Jill Lepore's history says the Framers expected amendment, yet the country has largely stopped trying; the last amendment ratified, the Twenty-seventh, was proposed in 1789 and approved in 1992, and the last wholly new one passed 55 years ago, in 1971. A new compact would combine constitutional change, where law truly requires it, with a much larger set of reforms that can proceed under existing law.

A carefully defined amendment package might include four narrow measures, each framed as a hypothesis for legal review. A public integrity amendment would confirm congressional power to set financial-conflict and disclosure standards for all government officials, including the president, vice president and justices. An accountability amendment could establish independent ethics enforcement and fixed judicial terms and an age limit. A representation amendment would authorize reasonable, content-neutral limits and transparency rules on political spending and affirm the right to vote. An environmental stewardship amendment, the most debatable, would recognize a public duty toward future generations. Breadth is the enemy of ratification, so each should be short.

Much can proceed now under existing law: stock-trading restrictions, blind-trust rules and foreign-investment limits; tax reform on gains, estates and trusts; disclosure and public-financing programs; voting-access and redistricting standards at the state and federal levels; opportunity investments in housing, education, health and retirement security; and environmental, grid and water infrastructure. Michael Lewis's work argues that none of it works without administrative competence, and Robert Putnam's that none of it lasts without civic participation. Heather Cox Richardson's analysis of oligarchy and Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s and Eddie Glaude Jr.'s accounts of citizenship and moral reckoning set the justice test.

The obstacles are formidable. Article V requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress, or a convention called by two-thirds of the states (34), followed by ratification by three-quarters (38). All 27 amendments have come through Congress, and although states have filed more than 160 convention applications since 1960, Congress has never deemed the threshold met. Lepore's catalog of failed amendments shows how rarely any route succeeds.

Sequencing is important: statutes first, to prove the ideas and build coalitions; amendments later, to lock in what works. Critics of that order will say that statutes are fragile and can be repealed by the next majority, while others will say that amendments are unnecessary if statutes suffice. Enforcement must be designed in from the start, because rights without remedies repeat the story of Reconstruction. Unintended consequences, from lost talent to evasion, call for review clauses and data. Above all, legitimacy requires that reforms apply across party lines, and that the central tension is stated openly: reducing concentrated private wealth must not create dangerous concentrations of government power.

A practical timeline might read: within two years, enact ethics and disclosure statutes. By 2030, complete tax and civic reforms and publish equality indicators annually. By 2032, draft and debate amendment text in public. By the early 2030s, pursue ratification. And by 2036, assess whether trust, mobility, accountability and environmental benchmarks have moved. A republic that is more equitable, just, accountable and verdant is not guaranteed by any single reform. It is built by a country that keeps its promises and keeps measuring whether it has.

Sources:

Jill Lepore, These Truths (W.W. Norton, 2018) and We the People (Liveright,2025).
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again (Crown, 2020) and America: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries (Crown, 2026).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road (Penguin, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton, 2018) and Blockers (W.W. Norton, 2026).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

A Verdant Republic

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

Environmental stewardship is, at bottom, a question about obligations across time. Debts to future Americans do not appear on a ballot, which is exactly why a republic must think about them deliberately.

Jill Lepore's history reminds us that government grew to meet environmental problems the market did not solve; her We the People also recounts efforts, mostly unsuccessful, to write environmental rights into the Constitution. A few states have gone further, with Pennsylvania and Montana guaranteeing a right to a clean environment in their own constitutions. Michael Lewis argues that the competence of agencies, whether forecasters, scientists or fire experts, is infrastructure. His new book Blockers includes a federal scientist who figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods. Eddie Glaude Jr.'s reckoning with national myths extends to who bears environmental burdens, the core question of environmental justice.

Here the evidence itself is contested terrain. In May 2025, NOAA announced that its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database would stop updating after 2024 data, citing changing priorities, statutory mandates and staffing. The database counted 403 disasters from 1980 to 2024 that each caused more than $1 billion in damage, totaling more than $2.9 trillion in inflation-adjusted losses, including a record 28 events in 2023. The nonprofit Climate Central has since revived the series with the scientist who ran it at NOAA, and reports 23 such disasters costing $115 billion in 2025. Defenders of the report saw an assault on climate science; while the critics defend the current administration’s ability to shift priorities and budgets. The database tracks costs and does not attribute events to climate change, so the claim is narrower: disaster costs are a measurable public concern, and the quality of federal data shapes policy.

The same question applies to other sources. Further evidence should come from EPA monitoring data, NOAA climate records and Census demographic data. EPA removed its EJScreen mapping tool, which showed unequal exposure to pollution and flood risk, from public access in February 2025. Volunteer coalitions have posted a reconstruction, and a lawsuit challenging the removal was dismissed on standing grounds in March 2026.

Four policy areas stand out: Clean energy can lower emissions and long-run energy costs. Grid resilience matters for reliability under heat, storms and rising demand. Water infrastructure, from lead pipes to aging systems to drought and flood management, is a perennial under-investment. Wildland conservation preserves landscapes and ecosystems, but are usually in tension with property rights and local economies.

The hard questions are practical. Who pays, and how are costs split between ratepayers and taxpayers? Can reliability be guaranteed during a transition? How are property owners compensated when land use changes? Can agencies deliver projects on time and at cost? Skeptics question affordability and dependability, while advocates stress the rising cost of delay. Both are asking about implementation.

The closing question is moral as much as technical: what do present generations owe to future Americans, and what institutions can credibly carry that obligation beyond one election cycle? In the end the question is: who do you love and what kind of world do you want for them?

Sources:

Jill Lepore, These Truths (W.W. Norton, 2018) and We the People (Liveright,2025).
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again (Crown, 2020) and America: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries (Crown, 2026).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road (Penguin, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton, 2018) and Blockers (W.W. Norton, 2026).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

The Unfinished Promise of Equality

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

The 14th Amendment promises equal protection of the laws.

Equality in law and equality in life are not the same thing, and the distance between them is where this article lives.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. shows in Stony the Road that Reconstruction achieved real advances in citizenship and political participation before it was overthrown by violence and law. Eddie Glaude Jr. argues in Begin Again that the country repeatedly tells itself myths that postpone reckoning. Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett frame the consequence as lost mobility and social cohesion: when opportunity depends on circumstances of birth, trust declines.

What does the current data show? Progress and persistent gaps exist, together. The Census Bureau reported on September 15, 2026 that real median household income reached $87,460 in 2025, the highest on record, and that the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2%, with 34.5 million people in poverty. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts taxes and noncash benefits, was 13.1%, with no significant change from 2024. Gains were uneven: median income rose 4.8% for Black households but did not change significantly for Asian or Hispanic households. Income at the 90th percentile rose 1.7% while the 10th percentile showed no statistically significant change, and public health coverage among adults 19 to 64 fell 0.5 points, driven by a decline in Medicaid.

Wealth is more concentrated in the hands of the few. The Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts put the top 1% at a record 32.5% of household net worth in the second quarter of 2026, up from 31.7% in late 2025. The share tends to move with the stock market, because the wealthiest households hold a disproportionate share of equities. The Fed's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances, released October 9, shows the racial gap. Median net worth was $332,100 for White families, $79,600 for Hispanic families and $36,800 for Black families, whose median fell about 25% since 2022. White median wealth was roughly nine times the Black median, though the White–Hispanic ratio narrowed to its smallest on record.

Those numbers cut both ways, which is why the debate over remedies is about more than statistics. Reform options span education (school funding, early childhood, college costs), housing (supply, zoning, rental assistance), healthcare (coverage and affordability), employment (wages, training, labor standards) and retirement security (Social Security solvency, portable accounts). Each carries costs. Disagreement is not only about money but about fairness itself. Some prioritize equal opportunity and fair rules, others emphasize narrowing outcomes, and still others stress personal responsibility and growth over redistribution. Opportunity-focused policies often earn broader support than outcome-focused ones, though the line between them blurs; early childhood investment, for example, is both.

The measure of a promise is whether it is kept, so this series proposes measurable indicators rather than slogans: the share of children who out-earn their parents, the racial and ethnic wealth gap, homeownership and rent burden by group, high-school and college completion by income, uninsured rates, retirement-account coverage, and poverty on both official and supplemental measures. Publish them annually, assign responsibility, and equality becomes something citizens can track.

Sources:

Jill Lepore, These Truths (W.W. Norton, 2018) and We the People (Liveright,2025).
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again (Crown, 2020) and America: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries (Crown, 2026).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road (Penguin, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton, 2018) and Blockers (W.W. Norton, 2026).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Who Governs America?

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

American democracy requires equal votes, not unequal influence

On Election Day, every citizen's vote counts the same. Between elections, influence is distributed very unevenly. Understanding that gap, and what can be done about it, is the work of democratic reform.

Formal equality had to be fought for. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Jill Lepore trace a pattern of expansion and restriction: the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Amendments widened the electorate, while Jim Crow, poll taxes and later disputes over voting rules narrowed access in practice. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark. Shelby County v. Holder (2013) changed how its protections work, and this April Louisiana v. Callais, decided 6–3, sharply narrowed Section 2, the Act's main remaining enforcement tool. Supporters call that a return to the statute's text. Justice Kagan, in dissent, called it the demolition of the Act.

Heather Cox Richardson argues that concentrated money buys access and agenda-setting power, and the sums are large. In the 2023–24 cycle, 2,526 super PACs reported $5.1 billion in receipts and $2.7 billion in independent expenditures (FEC figures via USAFacts), while outside groups overall reported about $4.4 billion in independent spending. The Brennan Center estimates that donor-concealing "dark money" reached at least $1.9 billion in 2024 federal races, and says that figure probably understates the total. That money flowed to allies of both parties. Political scientists disagree about how directly money translates into policy, and spending does not guarantee wins. The evidence supports concern about access more securely than it proves control.

Robert Putnam adds the civic side. The Upswing describes declining membership in the unions, congregations and associations that once gave ordinary people organized voices. When those intermediaries thin out, money fills the gap.

Reform faces constitutional limits, chiefly the First Amendment. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) treated spending as protected speech, and Citizens United (2010) extended protection for independent spending to corporations and unions, on an assumption, the Brennan Center notes, that the spending would be transparent.

These four action items stand out.

Disclosure is the most constitutionally secure, since courts have generally accepted it, though dark-money structures that route funds through nonprofits and shell companies complicate it. That is the case for limits on dark money in the form of disclosure: the Brennan Center and other advocates argue that because dark-money groups can funnel unlimited sums through super PACs, voters and regulators cannot judge influence they cannot see, and they would require disclosure of the original donors behind those transfers, restoring the transparency Citizens United assumed. Opponents counter that compelled donor disclosure can expose supporters of unpopular causes to harassment, a concern the Supreme Court credited in 2021.

Public financing and small-donor matching amplify modest contributions without limiting anyone's speech; Buckley itself upheld voluntary public financing. The best evidence comes from New York City, where $6 in public matching funds for each of the first $175 a donor gives has increased the number, share and diversity of small donors in city council races, according to researchers at the Campaign Finance Institute and the Brennan Center. Supporters argue this changes candidates' incentives: a campaign built on small gifts from across a district depends less on a few large donors, and candidates without wealthy networks can compete.

The evidence is not uniform, which is why design matters. Los Angeles' matching program was substantially less effective than New York's, and one study of Seattle's voucher program found that donor pools stayed largely similar to before, though other research found a more egalitarian pool. Costs to taxpayers and the rules on who qualifies remain debated.

Redistricting reform, such as independent commissions, addresses distorted representation. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Court held partisan gerrymandering claims nonjusticiable in federal court, leaving states and Congress as the venues.

Voting-access policy is the most contested. The SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote, passed the House 218–213 but has repeatedly failed in the Senate, including a voter-ID-only version before the August recess; backers have vowed to try again this fall. Supporters point to broad public approval of photo ID and stress election integrity. Opponents warn that millions of eligible citizens lack easy access to the required documents and that the bill would curtail methods like online and mail registration. Evidence on fraud rates and on turnout effects should drive the discussion, and each side should be pressed to show its numbers.

A realistic program combines institutional and civic work: transparency rules that survive judicial review, fair maps, and the rebuilding of civic organizations that give citizens leverage between elections. Neither money nor apathy governs by itself, but both fill vacuums.

Sources:

Jill Lepore, These Truths (W.W. Norton, 2018) and We the People (Liveright,2025).
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again (Crown, 2020) and America: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries (Crown, 2026).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road (Penguin, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton, 2018) and Blockers (W.W. Norton, 2026).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

Public Office, Private Wealth

by Alvin Blackshear  |  Historian & Researcher

Trust in government depends on a belief that officials serve the public rather than themselves. Any serious discussion starts by separating three things: proven corruption, which is illegal and prosecutable; legal conflicts of interest, which are permitted or manageable but risky; and appearances of impropriety, which may involve no wrongdoing yet still corrode confidence. Policy should answer each differently.

The Framers anticipated the problem. Jill Lepore's constitutional history shows their safeguards: the Emoluments Clauses, qualification rules and impeachment. But those tools were written for a smaller government and an earlier economy. Michael Lewis, from The Fifth Risk to Blockers, supplies the other half of the story: rules matter only if career officials can apply them, and ethics offices and inspectors depend on administrative independence.

These five proposals merit serious consideration.

Limiting individual stock trading. The STOCK Act of 2012 requires disclosure but does not bar trading. On July 22, 2026, the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act, 232–198, with all Republicans and 13 Democrats in favor, according to news reports. The bill would bar new stock purchases by members and their families and require advance notice of sales. Critics say it is not a true ban because members can still sell. Democrats also objected to unrelated election provisions attached to it, including a voter ID requirement, and introduced a broader ban covering the president, vice president and cabinet. The Senate's response remains uncertain.

Mandatory Retirement at 75. The Constitution sets qualifications for members of Congress, and the Supreme Court has held that states cannot add to them. Federal judges have lifetime tenure. An age cap would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment.

Blind trusts above $1 million. Current law already allows qualified blind trusts, but critics doubt they are truly blind. A statute could set net-worth thresholds and independence standards.

Prediction-market limits. Event contracts raise insider-information concerns when officials can foresee or influence outcomes. Senators have unanimously approved restrictions on senators and their staff, and a bipartisan bill from Kirsten Gillibrand and David McCormick would extend similar limits to the president, vice president and senior executive officials. A House Republican proposal would cover members, spouses and dependent children but not White House officials. Meanwhile the CFTC claims exclusive jurisdiction over these markets, so legislation and regulation are still being sorted out.

Restrictions on foreign investments. Congress can legislate here, but the definitions of "foreign" and of covered assets are contested.

These reforms should cover all members of government, Congress, the executive branch, the judiciary, and state and local officials. Congress can reach federal officials; state and local coverage raises federalism problems. The constitutional sorting is straightforward in principle. Age and term limits likely require amendment; trading, trust, prediction-market and foreign-investment rules can proceed by ordinary legislation.

That leaves one remaining issue. A rule is only as strong as whoever enforces it, and an ethics office that answers to the officials it polices is little more than a disclosure form with a letterhead. Who would enforce these new rules?

Sources:

Jill Lepore, These Truths (W.W. Norton, 2018) and We the People (Liveright,2025).
Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again (Crown, 2020) and America: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries (Crown, 2026).
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road (Penguin, 2019).
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (W.W. Norton, 2018) and Blockers (W.W. Norton, 2026).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

America's Second Estate

Should we fix why you pay more in taxes than a millionaire?

by Alvin Blackshear | Historian & Researcher

Before the French Revolution, the “Second Estate” was the nobility, a class defined by inherited privilege. Whether modern America has built something similar is a serious question, and it begins with how we tax each citizen to pay for common goods and needs.

Heather Cox Richardson frames American history as a contest between democracy and oligarchy, in which concentrated economic power repeatedly seeks to entrench itself politically. Her framework is historical, not a tax proposal, but it points to a practical issue: the tax system treats income and wealth very differently. Income, mostly wages, is taxed as earned. Wealth, mostly appreciating assets, can grow for decades untaxed, may be borrowed against, and at death generally passes to heirs with a reset cost basis, so that unrealized gains are never taxed.

Law professor Ray Madoff makes a version of this argument in The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy (University of Chicago Press, 2025). She contends that tax rules, including those governing trusts and charitable vehicles such as donor-advised funds, consolidate wealth across generations and create two tracks, one for earners and one for owners. Defenders of current tax rules respond that capital formation, charitable giving and family businesses are worth protecting and that tax avoidance can be addressed more narrowly. But this type of tax policy is not progressive or equitable. Lower-income individuals end up paying a larger share of their total income in taxes than wealthy individuals (such as through sales taxes, flat excise taxes, or capped payroll taxes). Currently, the rules favor the accumulation of wealth and inevitably it is taxed well below other forms of earned income.

Robert Putnam links the outcome to the destruction of our social cohesion. The Upswing ties rising inequality to weakening trust, shrinking mobility and declining shared institutions. If advantage compounds across generations, the promise of opportunity evaporates.

Three suggested reforms deserve a deeper examination.

An annual wealth tax would attempt to address the imbalance by taxing the ownership of substantial net wealth, rather than relying exclusively on taxes imposed when income is earned, investments are sold, or estates are transferred. An annual wealth tax could tax unrealized holdings directly but faces hard valuation problems for private businesses and art, evasion through relocation or restructuring, and constitutional questions.

Taxing gains at death (ending basis step-up or treating death as a realization event) targets the largest untaxed gains using existing income-tax concepts. Concerns include liquidity for heirs and farms or family firms, which design features such as deferral or payment plans can soften.

Inheritance or estate-tax reform changes who pays and how much: lowering exemptions, closing trust loopholes, or taxing recipients rather than estates. The federal exemption was raised sharply for 2026, so far fewer estates owe tax. Avoidance through trusts and valuation discounts is the central enforcement challenge.

Each option involves tradeoffs among revenue, administrability, economic effects and fairness, and each risks expanding government’s reach into private finances, a tension this series will keep in view.

The conclusion extends beyond budgets. Tax fairness affects democratic legitimacy: citizens who believe the rules favor an insulated class may stop believing in the rules. The wealthiest 1% of American households control approximately 32% of the nation's household wealth, according to Federal Reserve data. Within this extraordinarily privileged group, an even smaller concentration of ultra-wealthy individuals possesses enormous economic resources and political influence.

The fundamental question is whether America's tax system can effectively reach these vast concentrations of private wealth, or whether the nation's wealthiest citizens will continue to enjoy advantages that place much of their accumulated fortunes beyond meaningful taxation. Should American tax policy prevent the calcification of a permanent, hereditary economic aristocracy, a Second Estate?

Sources:

Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, The Upswing (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War (Oxford, 2020).
Ray Madoff, The Second Estate (University of Chicago Press, 2025).