Building wealth from the bottom up a good idea

Is there any question that the system is rigged to favor the rich getting richer? Is there any doubt that the middle class is falling off the cliff at a faster rate as a result of the fix being in?

When I learned that the top bosses in my former company got huge bonuses the year after cutting thousands of jobs (including mine), that was pretty much it for me. I don't need anymore convincing that the system needs to radically change.

The salary gap between employees and CEOs has been widening for decades. The trickle-down theory isn't working anymore. These same CEOs who are pulling in disproportionately large salaries are also driving regular folks right to the poor house with layoffs, furloughs and salary reductions. I don't condone a system that rewards the wealthiest people for eliminating the jobs of folks who are just trying to get by. Is that radical of me?

I don't understand the lack of character it must take to accept a million-dollar bonus only weeks or months after laying off thousands of employees, many who may never work in a good job again because of their age. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down principles only worked when there was a sense of fairness at the top -- a willingness to share the wealth. It doesn't work when one guy runs off with all the profits.

Even our tax system, with all the loopholes, favors the wealthy. I can't afford an accountant to find ways for me not to pay my fair share of taxes. But you can bet anyone of certain means isn't doing their tax returns with TurboTax software.

Is it time that the wealthy and powerful chip in a bit more? Certainly. They can do so in a number of ways, starting with hiring people in their businesses where existing employees are stretched thin. Getting people back to work increases the tax base and relieves some of the stress on the current workforce. If a company can afford to give out obscene bonuses, it can afford to hire a few people.

This brings me to the top article in The New York Times today. It talks about President Obama wanting to address wealth inequalities as part of the health-insurance reform bill. Instead of screaming about socialism, the more conservative-minded folks should understand that evening the playing field isn't a crime against capitalism. This country was built on a sense of equality and relative fairness. We've lost our way in recent years. What we have now isn't equal or fair. If the president wants to shift things back to a time where wealth was built from the bottom up, I don't see that as an act of socialism. I see that as a method of preserving and rebuilding the middle class.

Of course, I am speaking mostly to reasonable conservatives here, not people who think Sarah Palin is on an intellectual par with Stephen Hawking or that Rush Limbaugh isn't mostly motivated by protecting his own wealth and ego.

I am not a proponent of handouts. I don't want to see America turned into a welfare nation. But I do back efforts to stop the wealthiest 5 percent from walking all over 95 percent of fellow Americans. Just think how many jobs would have been saved in the last two years if there was more corporate oversight and less personal and institutionalized greed. Instead, the rich and powerful drove us right into a recession while they fattened their bank accounts and landed safely with their golden parachutes. They fired hard-working people in order to be rewarded by their boards of directors. The bankers, the CEOs and everyone who is unethically benefiting from this recession are the ones behaving in a very un-American way.