Imploring the Wealthy to Share, Or Spend

SEVERAL NEW STATISTICAL revelations about the overall economy should be sufficient to raise our collective eyebrow. There's been a lot of discussion about the federal minimum wage lately, and studies are now showing that if it were raised from the current seven twenty five to ten an hour, as many as five million Americans would be lifted out of poverty. Amazing what a little thirty percent increase in income can do. Those opposed to this argue that it would reduce the number of jobs. Maybe. Or maybe it would reduce profit margin, or the salaries of executives, or dividends for share holders. But it would definitely help the minimum wage workers. Another recent study is a bit mysterious, but still illuminating. Roughly one out of five children in America has regular episodes of unfed hunger, amazingly, in a nation so wealthy. Worldwide, millions of children go hungry, many starve. Calculations indicate, and this is all abstract math, that a rather small part of the profits of the super wealthy, the upper one percent, would be enough to feed all these hungry children. Incredible, if you think about it. The world's hungry greatly outnumber the world's ultra wealthy. Nonetheless, they'll need help convincing the world to redesign its economic system to let the trickle down begin. Also among the super rich, the savings rate has increased drastically, to about thirty seven per cent, which is incredibly high. The average American savings rate, including all the poor people and everybody else, is about, what, one percent, or negative one percent? It used to be negative, I recall. So, the rich people are hoarding their money, sitting on huge unused piles of cash. Must be a lingering fear from the recession, or something. The corporations are doing the same thing. In a healthy economy, the poor save their money, and the wealthy spend and invest theirs. The next time the Occupy Wall Street movement emerges, maybe it should have as its message " if you won't share it, will you at least use it?"