The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Wealth in our nation is exclusively concentrated in the hands of the few. In a country of 330 million people; 23 million millionaires and 902 billionaires have a net worth exceeding $50 trillion.
The top 10 % own roughly 70% of the country’s wealth. The bottom 50% of us hold only 2% – 3% of total U.S. wealth.
The rich believe our country works best when those at the top, the educated and well-connected run our government. They need us to produce goods that create capital which moves the rich society upward.
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High incomes for the wealthy are then reinvested in assets that grow more wealth. This creates a cycle where rising wealth inequality leads to even greater capital income concentration.
It is ever more clear that the politics of the wealthy and their party’s power prefers tax cuts for the wealthy than economic justice for the rest of us.
Only the establishment of a national wealth financial fund, independent of our government, that allows the rest of America to participate on Wall Street will offer a means to make gains for those of us being left behind.
A dividend paying national wealth fund such as exists in Norway or in a limited way in Alaska, using oil revenues, provides a model of how to share wealth with those who have too little.
This is a collective financial management fund that everyone in the country owns an equal part of. Funded by taxes on the financial transactions of those at the top. This fund invests in assets that generate income much like corporations and the wealthy use but the income becomes a universal dividend that goes to everyone in our country
Our income inequality is reduced by allowing capital income to be earned by the non-wealthy within the same financial markets of those at the top and parceling it out as a dividend to needy Americans.
We need a fund manager, such as a Warren Buffett, to outline a national wealth fund using taxes on the financial transactions of the wealthy put to work on Wall Street, to pay out dividends for those of us without enough.
– Hanson, of Elkhorn, is a member of the Walworth County Democratic Party.
