The United States of America is the richest nation that the world has ever known, but depending upon who and what you are, and where you live, this might not be so obvious. The fact of the matter is that there is a very small percentage of Americans that own an incredibly large amount of the assets of this very wealthy nation, with unfortunately today’s great middle class now being firmly held under perpetual financial assault, just in their trying to maintain their status, and of which the poorest contingent of Americans, are suffering from extreme poverty, of which, we read at Investopedia.com, that an incredible 10.4% of Americans actually have a negative net worth.
None of this is all that new to those that have studied the history of America, and in fact, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana in 1934, made it his point to proclaim that what this nation so needed was to share its wealth, and proposed the way and means to do so. The fact that Huey Long was assassinated just one and a half years later after making this proposal, is a true reflection that those in great positions of power and wealth, don’t take kindly to those that would try to extract monies and power from them.
When it comes to wealth, one of the primary ways to redistribute such, as outlined by Senator Long, is to tax those that have that wealth so that their wealth could therefore be redistributed to those sectors of the economy and peoples of this nation in a way and manner that would benefit those in most need. To somehow believe that this nation needs more billionaires, or that our biggest, most powerful and profitable corporations should simply be able to dodge paying their fair tax share back to the society, which permitted their existence in the first place, is misguided, and would then lead to without correction, to make for a society that would become ever more unequal and unfair.
So too, Senator Long believed that each household should receive and be entitled to a basic income, by the fair sharing of the wealth so created in this nation, which is in accord with today’s belief in the necessity of a Universal Basic Income for all. Further to the point, Senator Long advocated for old-age pensions, as well as a limitation of work hours required to make ends meet, so as to have therefore a better balance between recreation and labor work, so readily actuated because of the advances and progressions in the usage of machines as well as other labor saving devices so being implemented and utilized.
The point that Senator Long was making in his Share Our Wealth Society, is that the governance of this nation needs to do a far better job in the elimination of poverty, by providing the ways and means, along with safety net so required, in which then, every American could have the basis of a decent life, so done through the redistribution of the wealth of this nation, by a robust taxation system, that would still allow those at the very top of the wealth scale, to continue to have plenty of the accouterments that they are accustomed to, but not at such an excessive scale.