COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

COMMONWEALTH IS A GOOD WORD

Commonwealth is a word that has been in use in the English language since the late fifteenth century. And it has been a good word: good being itself a social word, from the same root as gather and together. Massachusetts and Kentucky are commonwealths, not just states. As commonwealths, they are dedicated to the common good. The motto of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”

We have perverted the idea of wealth, however. Wealth these days is what every American is supposed to pursue for himself or herself--and to hell (or poverty) with everybody else. And thus we get Donald Trump.

Of course, Trump is a minor leaguer. His bragging about having $9,000,000,000 is silly, in the grand scale of American greed. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are each worth ten times that. They sit on fortunes of $90,000,000,000 each.

There are currently 45,000,000 Americans living in poverty. That's 15,000,000 households or families. Suppose Buffett and Gates gave each of those 15,000,000 families a thousand dollars. That would cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and they would still have $75,000,000,000 each, which would earn as much as the $15,000,000,000 that each of them gave away.

But neither Buffett nor Gates is going to live forever, so they can afford to give a lot more than 16.5% of their hoardings. Let's have them give away 90% of their hoardings--and they will each still have more than the bragging peanut-vendor Donald Trump.

Or let's give them three years. The first year Buffett and Gates can each give $3,000 per household to the Americans living in poverty. That will cost them $45,000,000,000 each--half their wealth. And those poor families will have an extra $6,000 each.

The second year, Buffett and Gates will have $45,000,000,000 each plus the $5,000,000,000 that their fortunes have earned for them--without their doing any work at all! So they can each give $2,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost each of them $30,000,000,000--and leave each of them with $20,000,000,000.

The third year they can each give $1,000 per household to those living in poverty. That will cost them $15,000,000,000 each--and still leave each of them with more money than Donald Trump has!

Of course, even this kind of giving won't eradicate American poverty. But if we use it as a model--for all American billionaires, and maybe even for millionaires, in threee years' time we could make the United States a commonwealth, and even a functioning society.

 And if we could do that, then maybe we could all turn in our guns!