Tea Party

I now live in Southern Minnesota in the suburbs of Minneapolis/St Paul and we are having a very mild winter. This is quite different from Grand Forks, ND where we lived when our children were small. Also we are prepared so we have many snow plows and our roads are usually cleared by the next day.
I think you have a misunderstanding of the Tea Party. Their main complaint is the corruption in government and they would like to throw the bums out like they did in 2010. We have something here called Gerrymandering. The constitution requires that every ten years we have a census and one of the outcomes of the census is called redistricting. We have 435 representatives in congress and they are supposed to be equal numbers of people in each district so every ten years the district boundary lines must be withdrawn and this is where the problem starts. The lines are drawn not just based on population but also on how the people voted. By making the lines in very crooked ways they can push a majority of one party into a district thus assuring the re-election of that party. In almost every election over 90% of incumbents are re-elected. This makes them less responsive to their constituents and this is way the Tea Party say vote them all out.
One of the concerns of many here is that the US is heading in the same direction as Europe in regards to pensions and health care. I don’t know if you can see this but to me the problems in Europe today are caused by the government doing more for the people than the government can afford. When you try to take away benefits people revolt like they are doing in some Southern European countries. We can start making changes in our government programs now in order to avoid what is happening in Greece but our politicians are too afraid to touch what we call entitlements, things like social security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are all going broke but we keep putting off dealing with them. This is called kicking the can down the road and we have been doing that for many years and if we keep doing that we will end up like Greece. When Social Security was started here by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 there were 15 people working for each person retired. Today there are only 3 people working for each person retired and in a few more years it will be only 2 people working.
Just as Social Security, the federal government’s retirement plan, is going broke so are the state, county and city plans going broke. The same thing is happening to private pension plans. Over the years these plans offered better pensions instead of pay increases and now they have to pay up and they don’t have the money. Some say we should take the money from the rich to pay for these things but there is not enough money there. Of the 140 million taxpayers there were 235,000 who earned more than 1 million and the total earned was 726 billion or an average of 3 million. Our deficit for this year is 1.3 trillion so even if we took all of their money it would not even cover this year’s deficit.
The latest idea proposed by the 99 percenters is to take from the rich and here is how that works out.
During the last Presidential campaign Candidate Obama made the news when he spoke to Joe the Plumber and said he was going to spread the wealth around. This has widely been interpreted as spreading income around. I have calculated that if all of the income from the 1 percent was taken from them and given to the 99% it would provide each family with $15,000. This would be a nice gift but not a life changing event. However, if we take Obama at his word and redistribute the wealth that is a different story. The wealth of the country is estimated at 60 trillion and the 1% own half of that so if we take their half which is 30 trillion and give that to the 99% each family would get an extra $200,000.
Now that is a substantial amount but my guess is that even that big chunk of dough would be used up in a short time and the 99% would be back in the same boat they are in now. I say this because studies have shown that lottery winners of less than one million experience only a short term change in their life styles.
The point of all this is that redistribution sounds like a great plan for the 99% but the truth is that there are not enough rich people to make a difference.
To illustrate the point on a larger basis if all the money in the world was redistributed each US family instead of having a net worth of $160,000 would have a net worth of $16,000.
If there is any lesson in all this, it is that if you want to increase your net worth, don’t wait for redistribution but get out there and go to work. You might be surprised at how much you can accomplish. Of course the first thing you need is a job. A job is the best safety net and the best way to increase the size of the pie. When the economy begins to grow and the pie gets larger everyone benefits. Obama believes that the government can grow the economy but I believe it takes private companies. When the government spends money they got that money from the private sector and this limits growth. President Obama is fond of using the word fairness and I say that since the average family income is $50,000, why not pass a law that says every family should earn $50,000. What could be fairer than that? But then who would hire you.