[federicobond]

I believe your reasoning, while correct, misses the bigger point: most of that wealth is not in the form of huge stacks of dollar bills in a bank safe, but company stocks. The only way to give a check to every citizen is to dismantle all these companies, which would destroy millions of jobs and make everyone much poorer.

[graycat]

No, my point is that, yes, the poor people are poor, way too poor, and the rich people are rich, but the reason that the poor people are poor is not that the rich people somehow have scarfed up all the money the poor people should have that, then, would put the poor people in the middle class.

Again, the gripe of the poor people that the rich people have the money the poor people should have is at most $10,000 once, and that wouldn't put the poor people in the middle class.

Or to get the poor people in the middle class will take many, Many times the amount of money the rich people have, say, over a lifetime, say, working 40 years at $100,000 a year, $4 million, that is, 400 times the $10,000. So, that the rich people are too rich solves, for the poor people, at most only 0.25% of the problem of the poor people. So, what we need for the other 99.75% is not from the rich people but, in a word, the powerful people.

That's a longer explanation of my main point.