Income inequality

Populist democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose main theme is income inequality, uses the oil depletion allowance as an example of unfairness. When the oil industry was in its infancy there were laws past that recognized that the oil would not last forever so the government offered investors an incentive to expand. One of these was the oil depletion allowance and that is still in use today. Each year the government pays oil companies 4 billion dollars under this program. Senator Warren in her stump speeches demands that this practice be ended and most people would agree. The question is what impact will this have on the working people and the answer is very little. Once again if you do the math and realize that when you spread the 4 billion among the 140 million working families, you get $30 for each family. There is no reason to keep this program going but to give the impression that it will do a lot for income inequality is misleading at best and deceiving at worst. The same can be said for going after the big banks. This is definitely something that should be done but it will not solve the problem of income inequality. Throughout history people have been taken in by the promise of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor but when the dust settles the poor are still poor. What a poor person needs is a good paying job and that comes from an expanding economy. Providence has given this country a gift in the form of oil and natural gas that could light a fire under this economy and provide the good paying jobs that would promote income equality.