Ronald Reagan became president on a platform emphasizing “trickle-down economics,” reasoning that if the rich got

richer, then wealth would “trickle down” for the rest of us. Despite being fully discredited, this ridiculous idea just keeps going. Indeed, the top 0.1 percent of the population now has as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent — a grotesque disparity not seen since 1937! Add the fact that average Black families have one tenth the wealth of average white families (unchanged since 1950) and our racial tensions are no surprise.

Marianne Williamson suggests giving $500 billion over 10 years to organizations working on behalf of African Americans as a way to repay and atone for their ancestors’ having been kidnapped and enslaved. No doubt many Republicans saw this idea as a flagrant waste of money, but since the pandemic those same financially prudent “leaders” have printed several trillion dollars out of thin air and handed it over to the wealthy. The rest of us get $1,200. No doubt there is a glaring element of racism in the U.S., and Black lives do matter, but redistributing the wealth would work wonders — or more accurately, reversing the upward redistribution of wealth that has gone on since Reagan.

Robert Bolman

Eugene

Comments are closed.