Wealth in America

When I was young I lived for a few years in Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands. It was commonplace for wealthy individuals there to live in what was referred to as a village. The villages could best be described as compounds that were surrounded by tall brick walls that typically had broken glass imbedded on their surface, in order to discourage individuals from climbing over them.

You would enter the compound by passing through a gate that was maned by armed guards. Inside the compound, all of the houses would be surrounded by tall brick walls. The driveway to your house would have a metal gate that was substantial enough to deter entrance to the house by an intruder. There would also be a solid metal gate that you could pass through if you wanted to enter the property on foot.

This was back in the sixties, before automatic garage door opening technology was commonly available. Each home owner adopted a distinctive Morris code like method of honking his horn, so that when he or she returned home from a day at the office, an individual in the house would recognize the horn and know to open the gate. I remember my father's code was particularly annoying, as he was in the habit of holding on to the last note until he saw the gate start to move open.

I could see my neighbor's carport from the upstairs window of my bedroom. I remember that there were two men in suits that would sit outside attending to the shiny Mercedes Benz parked there. I observed that one of them was the chauffeur, and the other was the guard, as he was clearly armed. When we first moved in, my brother yelled something at them from our window, and I remember the guard crouching down, his hand placed firmly on his weapon. We didn't mess with him again after that.

For the most part in Manila, the wealthy village people would either drive or take a taxi from their house to work or to an area that had good police protection. It wasn't safe to simply walk around outside the Village. Public transportation was strictly off-limits, as it was too dangerous for the wealthy to mingle that close with the general public.

In my case, being a kid in my early teens, about the only places I ever went to outside of the village was to school or to an American run establishment, such as the embassy or a military compound. There wasn't so much a thing there as good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods, like we have in American cities, it was more like the whole city was a bad neighborhood, so about the only place you were safe was in a guarded compound or secure area.

Before I continue, I don't want you to get the impression that Filipino people are by their nature lawless and prone to commit crimes against foreigners or their fellow countrymen. As a group, they are a very religious and I might add fun loving and just very pleasant bunch to be around. However, they live in an economically disadvantaged world wherein a very small minority have a ridiculously large amount of wealth, while an overwhelming majority live in poverty. Thus, it is just a law of nature that the wealthy would feel threatened when out numbered by so many that have so little.

I believe most of my fellow countrymen would be surprised to learn that twenty percent of Americans own almost ninety percent of the wealth in our country. Even more astounding is the fact that the top one percent of wealthy Americans own close to forty percent of all the wealth in our country. If you added together the wealth of the poorest one third of our country, about one hundred fifty million people, it would be close to the combined wealth of just the top 400 wealthiest Americans.

So you might ask how is it that the poor in our country, which is most of us in a relative sense, put up with a societal structure that allows for such a lopsided economic playing field? The answer lies in the concept of redistribution of wealth.

One of the chief preoccupations of all governments, federal, state and local is the redistribution of wealth. Hard working individuals and the wealthy have their earnings and wealth taxed by the government, who then doles it back out to others that aren't so industrious or wealthy, after taking a cut for themselves, of course.

Think of it as foreign aid, but domestic style. Our federal government doles out billions of dollars to foreign governments each year. In return, they promise to look out for our interests and leave us alone. It is sort of the same thing here domestically. As long the average American citizen has a roof over his head, food on the table, a flat screen TV and a cellphone so he can vote on his favorite contestant on American Idol, he or she will be somewhat content. Thus, the powers to be spread the wealth around just enough to promote a moderate level of civility among the masses.

The redistribution comes in many forms. Social security and medicare to the elderly, food stamps to the poor, child tax credits to large families, unemployment benefits to those not working, grants to charitable organizations, and so on. Those that receive the benefits are grateful, and those that pay for them - maybe not so grateful.

The truth is, in moderation, the redistribution of wealth is probably not such a bad idea. The wealthy in Manila are probably well enough off to substantially increase the standard of living of the masses if they wanted to, and then maybe they would not have to live in armed compounds. Of course they would never do so unless compelled to by unions or the Philippine government.

I remember enough about American history from school to realize that the standard of living of the middle class in our country around the turn of the century was significantly lower than it is now, some one hundred years later. Although surely a lot of this has to do with a robust economy, a lot of it also has to do with unions and legislation like minimum wage laws and social security.

Most wealthy individuals and members of the working class in our country would argue that redistribution of wealth legislation has gotten out of hand. To them, it seems as though the less advantaged among us are doing a little better than they deserve, based on their contribution to our society. However, It is not so much a matter of policy, in my opinion, as much as a matter of degree.

The current trend in our country is for the rich to get richer, while everyone else scrambles for a shrinking portion of what is left of the pie. It is not fair that money be taken from anyone by our government with the sole purpose of giving it to someone else. But it is also not fair that the rich get richer while everyone else struggles.

One has to wonder, then, with the gap between rich and poor widening at a compound rate, will there come a time in America when the wealthy will be living in armed compounds?