Economy

The poor will always be with us so it says in Matthew. That is true because some always have more than others but the poor are much better off today than in the past. The industrial revolution along with advances in medicine and technology, have vastly improved the lives of everyone, including the poor. Throughout history various unsavory people have taken advantage of the income gap and their efforts have led to disaster. The typical scenario begins in a country where there are a few very rich people and many poor. The rich are living in their mansion up on the mountain and the poor in the squalors below. A new, usually charismatic leader appears on the scene and preaches the redistribution of wealth. Once he is in power he will nationalize the industry and begins to confiscate the assets of the wealthy and then spread the wealth around, making sure that a goodly portion of it goes into his personal account. As time passes the people find out that they are no better off than before and rise up against the new leader. The most recent example is Venezuela. What people do not understand is that there have always been too few rich and too many poor. The net result is that they trade the tyranny of the rich for the despotism of the power hungry. Even in the Unites States, the richest country in the history of the world there are not enough rich to make a difference. I have calculated that if we took all of the income from the one percent and gave it to the rest of us we would each get $5,000. That is certainly a nice gift for most but it would not take very long before that was absorbed in our budget and we would be struggling along as we are now. The only proven way to help the poor in the long term is to grow the economy. We currently have a perfect opportunity to do this in the energy industry. Expanding fracking for natural gas on private and public lands, will provide an inexpensive source of energy for all manufacturing. These are high paying jobs that will improve our air and water quality and exports will help our balance of payments. Changing cars, diesel trucks, buses and trains over to natural gas is a good start. Replacing coal and oil in power plants is step two. If the government would work with industry to promote this vast source of energy the economy would boom. The cost of energy is critical to all industry.