Wealth gap

History has shown that capitalism or what is sometimes referred to as free market economy is the most successful government format ever created. This does not mean there is no room for improvement. The idea of some, is to get rid of capitalism and replace with something akin to socialism. This idea comes and goes in popularity and gets most popular when the gap between the rich and the poor widens. This is the situation today where the 3 million richest have more wealth than the rest of the country. Note the word wealth not income. Government is the only entity that can change this and therein lies the problem. There are ways the government can use to rectify this and the most common is the progressive income tax but that only effects income and not wealth. To effect wealth the first step is to get rid of the capital gains tax and that would being in about $200 billion per year but more would be needed. A wealth tax has been proposed and that would do the job if there were a way to collect. If this could be accomplished the real problem would be exposed and that is what to do with the extra money the government would collect. The other problem the country faces is the national debt. If the new money collected would be applied to the debt this would solve the gap problem while simultaneously solving the debt. The big temptation is to spend the money on new programs to get votes. Taking from the rich is top down but there is a bottom up that can go along with this and that is to promote private unions. This is a way to bring democracy to business and would go along way to closing the income gap. In recent years this has gotten out of hand to the point where CEO salaries are 350 times the average worker with an average salary is $24 million per year. In 1980 the CEO's were earning 20 times the average worker. Are we to believe that CEO's today are 17 times more productive than CEO's in 1980.