When I was about 8 or 9, I once made the outlandish statement to my Dad that we should take all the money the Rockefellers had and give it to everyone.  My Dad made me do some research by hauling me down to the Montgomery, AL library, on a Saturday, no less!  I discovered that distributing the Rockefeller wealth would mean giving everyone about 12 cents back in '59 or '60.  This was sort of deflating to my young ego.  It was also a very good lesson.  I learned that taking away a family's wealth and distributing it doesn't necessarily benefit everyone.

I did a recent calculation as a comment on nakedcapitalism.com, an ultra liberal web site.  Redistributing the wealth of the top 10 richest Americans to everyone would result in all of us receiving a check for about $1,600.  I estimated redistributing the wealth of the 100 richest Americans would result in everyone receiving a little over $3,000.  Any rational person can understand a one time check for $3,000, while nice, won't change your life.

As a child of the late 50's and early 60's, the OWS sure reminds me of Viet Nam error protests.   The difference is, I really could care less about the protests.  Income inequality has a lot of root causes, the most important being that the U.S. is not a socialist state.  I only hope it remains that way.

Your income and wealth depend to a major extent on:

• What family you are born into
• The job you have
• Luck
• Work Ethic
• Desirable skills
• Possibly education, if it teaches desirable skills

You can try for income redistribution, but I don't think the so called 99% will actually chose socialism.  I personally don't have much sympathy for someone that majored in sociology and expects to make what a neurosurgeon makes.  I guess that makes me a bad person in today's environment.

I am concerned about the accelerating wealth concentration in the U.S.  Having the appearance of an oligarchy based on financial engineering is extremely disturbing.  I am not sure moving toward socialism is the answer.  I think there are a variety of factors causing the problem, not the least of which is our Federal Government.  However, to address the wealth concentration effect, without addressing the Fed flooding the market with "cheap" money and the continual devaluation of our currency will only lead to the reoccurence of our problems.  We have a congress intent on spending way too much money on way too many programs, while noble in their ideals, are really more than we can afford.  Until all of this stops and we all start balancing our checkbooks, the problem will not get solved.

I have to say I still advocate adherence to the old SNL skit: "Don't by stuff you can't afford!"