A Modest Proposal

The net worth of the 400 richest Americans is approximately $1.4 TRILLION.

That's a lot of dough.

Since money is the root of all evil, as pious God fearing creatures they should be happy to give up some of it.

(If money really is the root of all evil they should gladly give up all of it, but that might be asking too much.)

More importantly, as patriotic Americans they should welcome the chance to help their beloved homeland in its time of need.

Now I don't want to be called a commie or a Maoist or a socialist...or, God forbid, a liberal!

So, I propose that each of the 400 gets to keep one billion dollars. If they just stuff it in a mattress, that will still allow them to spend $1,000,000 a year for the next 1000 years. Or, if they invest it wisely, a minimum of $40,000,000 a year after taxes. Forever. That should be enough for anyone to live on, don't you think?

If my grade school math is accurate, when you subtract 400 billion from 1.4 trillion you have a trillion left over. That goes to rebuilding our infrastructure, jump starting renewable energy projects, healthcare, retraining unemployed workers, school lunch programs, anything that might benefit the other 300 million of us.

Or we could just give 10 million deserving families $100,000 each to do with what they will. (As you can see, a trillion is a lot of money.)

Remember, the 400 still get to be billionaires, so they should have nothing to complain about.

If this seems like too rash a proposal, I do have one other possible option:

It involves a tumbrel and a guillotine.