Wealth

I just listened to a speech by Senator Sanders who is running for president and I learned something new. He is not talking about the redistribution of income but he is talking about redistribution of wealth. Now here is a way to make a difference with the poor people. The top one tenth of one percent own 6 trillion dollars of assets. If we take all of that and give it to the bottom 99.9 % each working family would get $40,000. This is not sharing their income but their assets. In other words we could take all of the Walmart stock from the Walton family, we could take the 50 billion of stock from Bill Gates. We would also get their other non- stock assets. We could take the billions from the young tech wizards and real estate moguls like Face Book owner Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet. Of course this is a onetime thing since next year these people will be broke. Now you might say let’s don’t take it all so pick a percentage say half. Now each working family will get $20,000. Then you can take the other half next year but then the money is gone. Since we are talking about working families this does not include the 20 million who are not working or the 70 million who are retired. If we want to really help the poor we need to get the assets from the top one percent not just the top one tenth percent. If we take the assets from the top one percent and give that to the poor each working family would get $120,000. Now we talking but remember next year it is all gone. The point is that I don’t think people understand the difference between income and wealth when Senator Sanders speaks. My guess is that most people would be uncomfortable taking assets from others.