That time again to look at history when debating the wealth inequality these days.

I for one do not think that this massive inequality is good for the nation or its people….but that is just me.

Let’s look to the Founders of this once great nation….

As the United States reaches its 250th year, the widening gulf between the very rich few and the rest of us has become glaringly apparent. In 2024, the richest 10% held over 67% of household wealth in the U.S., while the bottom half held just 2.4%. This wealth increasingly entitles one to power and privilege: there are numerous billionaires in key positions in the Trump Administration, and some (including the President) have used their public offices for financial gain.

The Founders would be horrified by these developments because they believed great wealth in politics would corrupt and destroy the republic. Those beliefs were shaped by a range of influences: the widely read works by Roman historians who blamed the empire’s decline on a widening gap between rich and poor; radical Protestants who called for a Godly republic with limits on property or even its redistribution in a Great Jubilee every 50 years; James Harrington’s 1656 novel Oceana, describing an island country with a constitution that gave land to all and placed explicit limits on income and wealth; Enlightenment philosophers, particularly John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), which argued “all Men by Nature are equal” and that individuals should not hoard surplus wealth; and Cato’s Letters, a series written by British “radical Whigs” in the 1720s who, angered by the infamous South Sea Bubble, called for reforms while bitterly criticizing the corrupting ties between wealth and politics.

By the mid-18th century, Anglo-Americans generally believed in the virtues of a “rough” economic equality, that a republic needed to avoid concentrated wealth and great poverty in order to maintain the public good and prevent corruption. These ideals held particular power because they reflected the experiences of most British Americans. Widespread property ownership among white settlers meant that in every province a far higher percentage of white adult men could vote than in England. Even the wealthiest Southern planters needed the political support of their poorer—yet still property-holding—neighbors.

The widespread embrace of these ideas can be glimpsed in the publication of Cato’s Letters in the BostonIndependent Advertiser in 1748. The very first selection included the warning that when a man’s wealth “become immeasurably or surprising great,” the community “ought to make strict Enquiry, how they came by them, and oblige them” to surrender part of their riches. “But, will some say, is it a Crime to be rich? Yes, certainly. At the publick expence, or to the Danger of the Publick.” The Advertiser was edited by Samuel Adams for artisans and laborers fired up by their successful resistance to impressment—the Navy’s effort to grab men for forced service—and concerned about rising poverty in the postwar depression. Sixteen years later, Adams would organize those artisans and laborers into the Sons of Liberty to resist British imperial measures.

https://time.com/7297269/founders-wealth-inequality-could-destroy/

Our Founders were a smart lot….they were well educated and could see what damage the concentration of wealth in few hands could do to this country and the people.

We should learn from their guidance….but will we?  (kinda doubtful)

And the destruction of the middle class continues….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”