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: : : : The point is, it doesn't really matter. People will be poor, and people will be rich, but past a certain point overall living conditions really depend on the economy. When the economy is good, everybody lives well. When its bad, the rich live and the poor struggle. But the economy is good! So why complain?: : : Food banks in the USA are reporting record demand in this "good" economy. The top 10% of the country owns 90% of the wealth. Coincidence? It's way past time to complain.
: : Another factoid; over 50% of tax reciepts come from the top 5% of wage earners. We've already got redistribution of wealth.
: : Sub-factoid; Give stuff away and people will take it. Give more stuff away and more people will take it.
: Another factoid for you: we only tax income, not wealth. If we were to tax wealth, then we'd be taking money from where the rich get most of theirs: stocks, bonds, the like. Watch them howl then.
Or leave the country taking their wealth and business acumen with them. Which I would wholeheartedly support.
Envy is the second of the Deadly Sins, right after Pride.
: Also, if the top 10% of the nation owns 90% of the wealth, we're not doing a very good job of redistribution, are we? Crumbs, Frenchy, that's what the truly wealthy throw us.
No, your not paying attention; I said that most of the government's taxes come from the upper quintile of earners and that's what is being redistributed.
Instead of waiting for someone to throw crumbs to you, why don't you get another job? Or create a service that others would be willing to buy?
: Lastly, if like me, you cherish democracy, then this very uneven wealth distribution should concern you. Money is power, and when you concentrate too much money in a small minority, they get too much power, and the result is the bought and paid for Congress and President (and elected judges) we have today. That ain't good for our democracy, and as I like to point out, just because we've had democracy for 200 odd years, there's no guarantee we'll retain it. Most of the world's history has involved non-democratic nations, so the big D is a fragile thing. We need to protect it, not justify those things, like grossly uneven wealth distribution, which harm it.
The only thing worse in history than the supposed fragility of Democracies (and here I mean the kind we have here, coupled with a Bill of Rights, etc.) is the disasters that schemes dreamed up by misfits like Marx have brought.
You don't know what poverty is unless you've been out of the US.
