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by Mel Griffith
It is sometimes said that figures don't lie, but liars figure. Recently I watched an interesting TV program. The reporter was showing people two charts. One showed the distribution of wealth in the United States among the richest 25%, the next 25%, the next 25% and the bottom 25%. The other chart showed the same distribution of wealth in Sweden. Not surprisingly, most of the wealth in the United States is in the hands of the richest people. After all, owning wealth is what makes them wealthy. Equally unsuprising, the poorest 25% of the population had very little wealth. Naturally, if a poor family owned a mansion, they would not be poor and the government might not give them food stamps, SSI, WIC payments, housing assistance and all the other rewards we give people for being smart enough to not have to work for a living. If you don't want to work, it is very important to remain poor so the taxpayers will keep you up. The chart for Sweden showed that wealth was much more evenly distributed throughout the population. The reporters interpretation of these charts was that the US system is unfair to the poor and ought to be fixed so that it would be more like the Swedish system. Actually, that was not what the charts showed at all. What the charts really showed was that in Sweden's over-taxed, over-regulated system, it is virtually impossible for anyone to become rich. Naturally, when rich people are essentially non-existent they don't control much of the nation's wealth. The reason that wealth is pretty well evenly distributed in Sweden is that nobody ever accumulates much of it no matter how hard they work because the government takes away all except enough for the bare necessities, no matter how hard one works. In that situation, what's the incentive to work hard?
In the mid-1960s Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, which was then 14%. Forty five years and billions and billions of wasted dollars later the poverty rate is 14.3%. The war on poverty has been a complete failure because the government does not understand a fundamental act. Most poor people are poor because they choose to be poor. Their priorities in life simply do not relate to economic success. Yes, they would like to win the lottery (and some waste money trying) so they could be rich for a few years while they waste their winnings. They are simply unwilling to either earn or manage money in ways that would lift them out of poverty. A Louisiana saying I don't hear around here sums it up, "poor people have poor ways."
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