free money socialism

This past week Margaret Thatcher died and I was reminded of one of her most famous quotes when she said that socialism is a great form of government until you run out of other people’s money. Sometime ago I wrote a short essay on taking the income from the rich and taking the assets from the rich. I repeat it here to illustrate Thatcher’s point. The average income of the top one percent of wage earners is 1.1 million. Since there are 150 million people working this means that the top one percent represents 1.5 million people. If we multiply this by 1.1 million and divide that by 149 million we get $11,000. If we took all the income from the richest one percent and gave an equal share to all the other working people they would each get $11,000. Since the average household income in the US is about $50,000 this would be a nice increase but it would take only a couple of years for these people to get used to their new income and then we would have to look at the top three percent and do the same thing over again. If you want to redistribute the wealth in a way that will have a real impact consider doing just that. Don’t mess with income but look at wealth. Instead of redistributing income redistribute wealth or what people own. The top one percent own 40% of all assets or 10 million each. Multiply the top one percent (1.5 million people) times $10 million and divide by 149 million and you get $100,000. Now you’re getting somewhere. Let’s just pass a law that says we can take all the assets of the top one percent and divvy it up amongst the rest of us. I only do this to illustrate what most people have always known and that is there are not enough rich people to take care of all the poor.