To the Editor:

Various citizens have made comments about the rich versus the poor based on their ideological thinking, but here are some startling facts:

• 20 percent of Americans own 93 percent of its assets.  

• 1 percent own 40 percent of its liquidity.

Another fact of life is that the middle class is shrinking while the rich are gaining in wealth.

Folks say that capitalism rewards effort, but only to a point. Too big to fail is a result of too much greed for money and power over others using whatever means available. Recent political ads funded by the super rich can only fool Americans for so long into voting for candidates that support their monopoly on wealth.

The bottom line is that if the middle class fails, so does democracy. Eighty percent of Americans are currently or will shortly become economic slaves as more and more jobs are sent overseas and more and more corporations are merged and jobs are lost while the super-rich make billions in the transactions.

At some point, the monopoly will self implode and at that point the rest of the world will take advantage of the vacuum. America only represents 5 percent of the world’s population but owns about 27 percent of its wealth. If 20 percent of Americans own most of the wealth in America, that could mean that 1 percent of Americans own about 25 percent of the world’s wealth.

The rich cannot fight 99 percent of the world — including its own countrymen — no matter how many political ads they buy or wars they create. Super capitalism is self-destructive, just like communism but for opposite reasons.

If the super smart and super rich don’t put their resources into compassionate capitalism (not as in welfare but in workfare), then revolution will surely follow.

So regardless of your ideology about the cause of this imbalance, we all are in it together. You can carve out your enclaves of gated communities, but you can’t hide. The only way out of life is to die, and each of us will have that experience. But if we allow human life to become so miserable for 99 percent of the world, then they may have nothing to lose and we will all join the parade of dinosaurs into a passing page of history leaving behind so much potential had it not been for our own stupidity, rigid ideologies, dogmas and greed.

Happy holidays.

Larry Stenger

Franklin