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It’s time for a redistribution of wealth

I was talking with my congressional representative’s office today and during the conversation, the person asked if I wanted to see a redistribution of wealth. They have a way of making that sound like it would be a bad thing and I spent some time thinking of that. Then I decided that I did indeed want to see that.

How about you? For approximately the past 35 years the average wage in America has been nearly flat. Now pay attention here. When I say average I am including everyone in the country. Everyone. So your Uncle Clem who got rich in the septic tank cleaning business or your Auntie Emmie who went broke running a week-old bakery outlet is included. So is your doctor, the person who rang up the sales in any store in town, the person running that train you had to wait for and, of course, you.

What that means is that most people have made a bit less each year. Now if you have bought anything in the past 35 years, you may have noticed that prices have gone up. And up and up. In real-life terms, that means the new car I bought in 1982 for less than $8,000 is no longer $8,000. Now back then in 1982, I was making about $10 an hour on the local railroad. That was pretty good money back then.

I am now retired but my wife is still working. She has a couple of master’s degrees, so she did not just jump out of high school and take what was available. But guess what. She is making right around $10 an hour in 2017.

So where did that money go? Money does not disappear, but it can be distributed differently. And that has happened so that over that last 35 years, a group consisting of one-tenth of 1 percent of America’s population has gotten over 90 percent of the money. That leaves someone out of luck doesn’t it? Probably you.

This should make you angry and you should at the very least gripe a bit. It might even make you decide that the folks you hired to manage the country (the above mentioned congress person) and your senators, have not worked very well at all for you and you might vote them out. But now we put the stick in the proverbial spokes and stop that wheel from progressing. Those folks that we hired to manage our country and who have pretty much failed to manage anything except their own bank accounts, have a way to distract you.

Divide and conquer! What is that you say? Well, I am a disabled veteran and I get a pension because I can no longer work. Those managers we hired (yeah the people in Congress) tell you that I probably do not deserve those benefits. I am getting what you are not and that cannot be fair, can it?

Forget that I got shot, stabbed, crushed and finally got cancer from being exposed to chemicals in a wartime situation. After all, that is the past. This is now and I am getting something you are not getting. Now you are mad at me, right? And you have forgotten to be mad at that person who caused the whole mess. See what happened there? Remember this is just me. And you. Now take that times 300 million citizens. Some of them are not your nationality. Some of that group have more than you. How can that be fair? Some of them are not your religion. Some of that other religion have more than you. That cannot be fair either, can it?

Oh by the way, I saw your doctor driving a big car and living in a house way nicer than yours. Oh sure, he went to college, but let’s face it, that doctor is not any better than you, is he or she? They cannot possibly deserve more than you have.

I’ll bet your head is whirling with examples right now and you are angry. But not at the people who caused this. You completely forgot about Senator Stuffpockets and Congressman Gimmeverything, didn’t you?

Let’s end this nonsense. Remember 9-11? We were pretty much one America that day. All going the same direction. Well we can do that again if we decided to. And then we could hire some new managers and — yes, I know you saw this coming — redistribute that wealth.

Maybe it is time to stop listening to that political party rhetoric and start paying attention to your bank account. Those so-called managers and their very few friends have done OK with theirs. Just a thought.

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