Sharing the Wealth (or Money is like Manure...)

A recent editorial in a Sacramento alternative newspaper lamenting Sacramento’s lack of a super-rich, one-percenter to fund big projects has it exactly backwards. Sacramento does not need a super-rich sugar daddy to buy our good will with a patronizing donation of some small part of his or her ill-gotten riches. Our state, our country, and our world do not need more super-rich people: We have way too many already.

In a country where three people have more wealth than the bottom half – and in a world where eight people have more wealth than the bottom half – what’s really needed are fewer super-rich people and more working folks receiving their just pay for the work they do. No one person can work hard enough to honestly earn billions of dollars. That wealth is pirated from the workers who do the actual work. We need to restructure our whole society to support a healthy, wealthy, and vibrant working class. We need a socialist economic system in which there would be public financing of public projects, projects that we could take pride in and not have to name after some egotistical rich pirate.

There is an old saying that money is like manure: Pile it up and it stinks, spread it around and it does a lot of good. We need fewer stinking piles and more spreading good.

– John Reiger
State Chair, Peace and Freedom Party