The Pie

"The top 1% has doubled its share of national income." So says (citing a Congressional Budget Office report) California congressman Brad Sherman. Our President, in virtually every speech, disses the "wealthy" (or, let's say, disses our system that he claims favors the "wealthy"). Even Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney finds political expediency, albeit treads lightly, in discounting the "wealthy" while promising a better world for the "middle class".

You'd think, per the rhetoric, that "national income" is some number that exists in and of itself. As if it's some already-baked pie to be sliced up and divvied amongst the masses.

Folks, don't let this malarky infect your thinking. There is no "national income", our nation doesn't produce income, we do. This notion that the upper 1% have somehow sliced a bigger space into the pie pan is utterly ludicrous. If indeed the CBO report is accurate (the vantage point, angle if you will, is critical [which we'll explore in a future post]); that, as a percentage of total income produced by the total population, the 1% own a greater percentage than in years past, it simply means that the 1% profitably produced more of whatever they produce at a price the world was willing to pay.

I.e., it simply means that the 1% made the pie larger. Go hard after the 1% and I assure you, we'll be eating less pie in the future.