Distribution of Wealth

One of the big complaints I hear from the Left is that the distribution of wealth in this country is becoming ever more biased to the rich. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

One of the big complaints I hear from the Right is that the Left is trying to redistribute money from those that have to those who do not, i.e. from the rich to the poor.

Rich is not necessarily bad. It depends on what you do with the money. To me, the problem seems to be that people with money are only interested in whether their investment is making a return that is adequate to keep them in beer and caviar, or whatever their predilections are. They are not really interested in what it is invested in. This would not normally be a bad thing, but this lack of interested control of investments, plus the huge amounts of money that have been siphoned off by our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left a lot of people out of work. And that is really bad for the country. You are going to have more people turning to gray areas in order to make enough to survive, and once you start doing shady things, it's much easier to start doing things that are illegal.

Of course just because something is illegal doesn't mean it is bad, and likewise, just because something is legal doesn't mean it is good. But we are a nation that is subject to the rule of law, well, at least we try to be ruled by law. So when people are doing things that are illegal, they are liable to run afoul of our criminal justice system, and that is costly for everyone. Maintaining a police force, courts, judges, lawyers and prisons costs money, money that is paid by taxes. So everytime unemployment goes up, you can expect your taxes to go up. More unemployment checks, more welfare payments, more criminal activity, more law enforcement expenses. And since you have fewer people working, you have fewer people paying taxes, so the increased tax burden is falling on fewer people.