The Rich Get Rich and . . . Re-Distrubution

I read a posting from my friend Claire who also blogs on Blogspot ( http://claireloveslifeback.blogspot.com ) She posted, without comment, a clip from Fault Lines, a production of Al Jazeera's English language operation that was entitled "The Top 1%"  whose first paragraph of text read: 

 "The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it's been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years" 
 
Obviously, they were very critical of the disparity of wealth in the US. As I watched and listened, I began checking out the top fifteen billionaires in the world. I responded with this:

"OK, I can agree that the rich get an unfair break, mostly pushed by the Republican party. It is interesting to me that of the world's 15 top billionaires, only three Americans make the top five, Bill Gates, at #2, a man who has given huge amounts of his wealth to help people through his private charity; Warren Buffett, who spends a good deal of his money to help small businesses get started and Larry Ellison, who recently cut his salary to $1 and plans to give 95% of his wealth to charity. Only one other American is within the top ten, and that is Sam Walton's daughter-in-law and her family. Christy is known as a philanthropist. All of the remaining fifteen billionaires are not Americans, and some of them are from what most people would describe as Third-World nations, like Mexico and Brazil.

So, it is not strictly an American problem and I get tired of the re-distributionist left screaming to claim more of the earned wealth of the rich for themselves. Most of America's billionaires are self-made -- and that's true in the rest of the world, for the most part. Only a handful inherited their wealth, including Walton, but most of the inherited great wealth is from the Muslim oil-rich sheikdoms.

The story -- which I can hardly consider unbiased, coming as it does from Al Jazeera, not usually consider a friend of the US -- cites the great and widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots in the US and that the chances of rising from the bottom to the top are worse here than elsewhere. How many poor people in some of the rest of the world, especially the developing world where a good deal of personal wealth is held by the few (and especially, perhaps in the Islamic world to whom Al Jazeera primarily speaks) can aspire to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs?"

As I said, I am fully cognizant of the divide between the very rich and all the rest of us and the fact that the gap between those of us who consider ourselves middle class and the working and unemployed poor is narrower than it was when I was a kid. No argument. But it irks me no end when the left -- especially the foreign left -- acts as if this is an American and only an American problem. 

Do I think that the richest should contribute more? Of course I do. Will they? Not as long as they have the Republican party tucked into their checkbooks like a bank card. The magic number that Democrats seem fixated on an income of $250K a year or more. But those folks aren't the really rich. These days, they are the top of the middle class, with that salary just about covering expenses and some well-earned luxuries. And for many, that wealth isn't wealth that they can spend, it is the value of their business and the profits from it. They are not the mega-corporate rich, they aren't Exxon or Bechtel. They are, mostly, mom-and-pop businesses, the sort of businesses that are the bedrock of America.

Both parties seem to be engaged in a war of words and one of the weapons they use is language intended to create class warfare, engendering a hatred for whichever group they don't represent. I am, nominally, a libertarian, but where I come to problems with the big "L" Libertarians, the Party, is in their belief that business and the rest of the private sector can cure all ills if allowed to do so. I'm sorry, the only thing I trust as little as I trust Big Government is Big Business, their all-too-frequent best buddy and hand-holding partner. I don't thin either of these Big Entities are the solution but are part of the problem.

I believe that government entitlements have a place in a world that has damn little individual charity -- this despite the work of people like Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda -- and has a need for a safety net for those who fall off the ladder to success. These days, that could be any of us. That the Republicans want to balance the budget by cutting benefits to the poor, the elderly and others in genuine need, infuriates me. But I think that the government, especially the progressive left wing of the Democratic party, has tried to do far too much, tried to be everything to everyone. And, like being the "Cops of the World" -- thanks, Phil Ochs, for that great title -- we just flat can't afford to do it. I don't think we ever really could, but as long as we were willing to keep getting deeper and deeper in debt -- and to for criminny sake, to the Chinese, of all people -- we could keep up the fantasy.

Do I have solutions? Well, being retired, having cashed out my retirement to cover current expenses long ago, and living on what Social Security sends me and my wife's paycheck (I'd like to work, and am looking, but at nearly 67 with pre-existing medical problems, I'm not  good catch, job-wise) the country can do what we do: decide what is vital, what is very important and what is necessary and just do away with all the rest. Do we need the latest whiz-bang military gadget? Probably not. 

(A side note, here: I recently watched a clip posted on a site for cops and soldiers about the gift of a $250 RC "toy" truck that has saved lives in Afghanistan. But we spend billions on all sorts of purpose-built military hardware, much of which is no more efficient than that "toy." Check it out at  http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/remote-controlled-truck-soldier-afghanistan-saves-soldiers-lives/story?id=14225434 ) 

Can we do without some of the money spent by our Congress Critters on junkets and pork-barrel hand-outs? I think we can. Can we perhaps look at the pensions we dole out to people who have served in Congress or as President and see if we could cut them? How many former elected officials make lots of money writing, speaking and advising industry? Quite a few, and yet we're paying them a pension based on, in some cases, only a few of years of service. Also, since almost no one is elected these days without a substantial amount of personal wealth, perhaps it's time to totally re-evaluate the practice altogether.

So, those are a few cost saving ideas, none of which would be popular -- especially the pension one -- with the people who make laws. But if the American people get together and vote for candidates whose platform includes some of these ideas, then perhaps we can actually save some money. Oh, yeah, and find a way to make the richest -- not the middling rich, the mom-and-pop rich -- pay more of their huge wealth to help support the nation.