Sad Truth about Wealth Gap
letter to a news columnist about her article
Hi Mary
I read your article on the truth about the wealth gap. Twice.
I agree with you. It’s
sad. But now what? Is this a call for ideas on what to do?
You mention one course of action briefly at the end, but the
emphasis of the article seems to be on “structural elements” that all but preclude
progress yet alone success in fixing this problem.
Is there anything that can be done? I believe there is, and I would like to offer
some suggestions. Like a lot of things,
the problem did not happen overnight, and it won’t be solved overnight. There is a tendency today to think the answer
for every problem is for the government either to spend money or give
money. But I have heard and read too
many stories of professional athletes or lottery winners who either earned or
won millions of dollars yet in a few short years were broke. I would suggest that the answers need to lie
with what individuals can do to for themselves more than what somebody can do
for the groups as a whole.
One of the most important things a person can do is to get a
good education. Yes, I went to good
schools, but I did not always have good teachers.
I remember a German teacher I had in high school. I heard he had recently been in a mental
institution. He walked and talked like
he was in quasi-catatonic state. He went
over the same material again and again and again. But you know what? I wanted to learn German. I had the book. And, no, it wasn’t a new book. It was well worn, but it was intact. I was not limited in learning German by what
was taught in class or by my homework assignments. I could read the whole book in my spare time
if I wanted, and there were plenty of German books I could get from the
library.
I was in honors classes through high school, but one
semester I was not, because my previous grades were too low. I had to get top grades to get back in again,
and I did. And that had nothing to do
with my teachers but what I did when I was not in school.
Yes, schools in poor areas could use more funding, but,
frankly, education is a mindset, a hunger for learning which should start long
before a child reaches school. And for
the vast majority of people, they will need a good grounding in formal
education to get anywhere in life.
The biggest single indicator of poverty is a single parent
household. Being a parent is a fulltime
job, at least for the early years, and how can a person go to school or work
and be a parent as well? One of the
secrets of gaining wealth is to control the spending of it. Having children when you are not able to
provide for them will trap you at the bottom economically for a very long time.
There is still the issue of good paying jobs, yet our government
sent millions of good paying jobs overseas.
Why? Simple answer: a combination
of greed and stupidity. We tax our
companies at some of the highest rates in the world (that’s the greed part),
and companies simply left for places where they could make more money (that’s
the stupid part).
Companies exist: to make money. They don’t exist to provide jobs or to pay
taxes. Companies were started by people
who wanted to make more money than they could by working for somebody
else. They identified a need and try to
meet it. It might seem noble and
patriotic for a company to stay in the country and pay the high taxes, but
companies know that their existence is not guaranteed. Many large companies have gone under in a
very short time due to competition, changes in the cost of doing business, or
other factors. They can’t afford to just
accept higher costs, including taxes, just for worthy motives. They’re either making money or losing
money. And unlike the government, they
can’t lose money for too long without closing up.
If our government sent jobs overseas, it can bring them
back. But this would take a major shift
in political thinking in our country. Our
country is divided pretty evenly politically right now, which means that policy
decisions can swing back and forth depending on which party has the upper
hand. This makes it hard for companies to
make major moves costing billions of dollars knowing that a favorable law today
can change in a few years. All this is
not providing encouraging news for those who want to gain wealth, but it does
point out some areas of government policy they can get involved with.
You mentioned insurance in your article. The best place to get insurance is through
one’s work. The group plans have the
lowest premiums and the best coverage.
And this goes back to the jobs issue.
Our government intentionally sent millions of good jobs overseas. (See my article The Quickest, Easiest Way to
Fix the Economy on my blogsite.) And new
government regulations are forcing many employers to drop their health
insurance, and this will diminish the wealth of everybody as more people have
to pay more money out of pocket for insurance.
The problem you highlighted in your article is enormous,
affecting millions of people. If the source
of the problem is structural and solutions are sought that would elevate
everyone at the same time and any time soon, I would say that things look pretty
bleak.
But for any particular individual, the younger the better,
their success in life has a lot to do with the choices they make. Doing well in school. At least finishing high school. Don’t have children until they are married.
To hope and wait for some government solution only
encourages the idea that people are trapped, that things are hopeless. I think the focus should be on what any one
person can do to improve their life.
Thank you
Larry Craig
