Rich vs poor

Throughout history there have always been too few rich people and too many poor people and this has opened the door for unscrupulous individuals to use this discrepancy to their advantage, the latest example is Chavez in Venezuela. Typically a charismatic person comes in and promises the people he will take away the money from the rich and give it to the poor. He gains power and redistributes the wealth making sure to take a little extra for himself. Then he uses his power to grow into a dictator and in the end the poor people remain poor and often worse off than before. This type of political approach is called populism and people just keep falling for it because in most cases they are desperate. The Obama administration is using this approach by pitting the one percent against the 99 percent and it is working as it normally does. No one ever bothers to point out that there are not enough rich to make a difference. Even in America, the richest country in the history of the world, if we took all the income from the top one percent and gave it to the 99 percent we would each get $5,000. If we further refined the redistribution to giving money only to the lower half of the income spectrum, those who paid no income tax, they would still only get $10,000. It may make a good election year sound bite to say you are going to spread the wealth around but it is an old game that never really makes much difference to the poor. It has been tried many times and the poor always end about where they were.