Here's a New year's resolution America is not going to make -- and yet it is a resolution America should make.
We all know that the gap between the rich & the poor is greater in America than in any other industrialized nation. We all know that something like three out of five children in America grow up in households whose income is classified as "below the poverty line." We all know our prisons are bulging, overflowing -- yet the streets of our cities are not safe. None of this is news.
Resolution? Decrease inequality. Decrease inequality. There is a ton of money in this country. We have many, many, millionaires. Something like one out of every thousand people in America is a millionaire. Take some money from these millionaires--and give some money to those who have so little. And my motive is pure selfishness.
Currently, we are not faced with lower class that "keeps its place." We are faced with a jungle (read city-country) in which we (property holders) have much more to lose, much-much more to lose, than they, the poor, the dispossessed. Voluntarily giving to them -- making them property holders --is simply a good investment. Make them a part of the system. Give them something they own, something they are afraid of losing -- and they will be on your side -- for Law and order.
But currently we give them nothing -- consequently they have nothing to lose -- and everything to gain by attacking us.
Long ago I read a satire that said that it would have been wiser & cheaper to have "bombed" Vietnam with refrigerators, TVs, appliances of all kinds, than it was to try to blow them up with actual bombs -- something which clearly didn't work. Once they acquired modern appliances, they would be too busy cooking, cleaning, vacuuming, purchasing consumer goods to be revolutionaries. And of course they would be working hard to save money for the day when they would have to replace their appliances.
This is not a joke. I cannot see why I, an outsider, would not attack the system -- turn to crime -- if the system gave me no hope -- no decent job --and no hope for a future with goods and possessions of my own. If you give me no hope to flourish inside the legal system, I will try to flourish wherever I can -- and in this country it is easy to flourish peddling drugs, mugging strangers, robbing stores, in other words, take money from those who have money.
Wouldn't you dear reader? Don't you want to make a decent living, a good living? Don't you want to make $50,000 a year? OR more -- or at least enough to keep you in consumer goods.
Give those who have nothing, give them property. Give them an apartment. Give them TV sets. Give them something they don't want to lose. Please give it to them. I am suggesting this as a matter of self defense. A small minority have far, far, far too much. Heavy taxation of those top few will still leave those top few with a great deal--and a slight tax on them will create a far more liveable environment for all the rest of us.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein