What if the following FLASH warning interrupted your TV program, and it was backed by NASA and by leading astro-physicists from around the world:

FLASH: It has been confirmed that America is directly in the path of an incoming asteroid with enough potential energy to destroy our country and everyone in it. We are on a collision course with oblivion, unless we take fast and deliberate steps to push it off its present course.

What would your reaction be?

  a. Let’s start to work on those deflection measures now while we can do it at least cost.
  b. Chances are they are wrong. Let’s party.
  c. Let’s wait and see what they say in a year.
  d. Let’s wait for 5 years and reassess the danger.
  e. Why bother? It’s so far away that those scientists couldn’t possibly know if it will hit us. Besides, there are millions of asteroids out there. We can’t dodge them all.

Actually, we have been hit many times in the past by asteroids. Moreover, there are several asteroids coming our way now, so this is not a false possibility. Here is what NASA scientists have to say about a few current asteroids:

1. A large asteroid now has NASA’s attention. A spacecraft is on its way to check on it.  The asteroid’s closest point to our planet is expected in the Spring of 2029.

2. Bennui is the name given a near-Earth asteroid first discovered in 1999. It could possibly drift into Earth's orbit and hit our planet by September 2182.

3. Another asteroid could make a perilously close approach to Earth in about 20 years from now, with a roughly 1-in-600 chance that it will collide directly with us.

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I suppose there could be a more frightening peril looming for us than to be made extinct in less that a second by a flaming asteroid coming in at 35,000 mph. Off hand, I cannot think of one. But hold those thoughts while I reveal an outcome that is already underway here, and it is having inconscionable effects on the poor. Wealth inequality is its misleading tranquil name. It is causing massive hardships here and around the world.

Current wealth held by the ultra-wealthy is sucking up most of the available wealth now being generated from stocks, bonds, and real estate in the form of dividends, interest payments, rents, and capital gains. Once the ultra-wealthy have taken their lion's share (all unearned and untaxed), there is nothing left for the poor 50 percent who put forth the efforts to create it. The squalor left behind shows up in cuts to unemployment rates, more hunger, higher crime and incarceration rates, more illiiteracy, more teen pregnancies, higher suicide rates, shorter life expectancies, and social immobility.

The aforementioned outcomes are occurring now, and will get worse with the passage of time. They are all tied directly to Federal Reserve data, employment data, cost-of-living data, to mathematics, and to an understanding of clear cause/effect linkages. Right wing politicians falsely blame the poor for their own poverty while ignoring the fact that $4 billion dollars are being sucked up from the economy every day and paid unearned and untaxed to the ultra-wealty. The math is simple:

$1.037 X 10^12  dollars / 365 = $2.74 X 10^9 dollars

The ultra-wealthy thus collect nearly $3 billion daily, or $453 billion annually in tax-free dollars just to be paid the  interest, dividends, rents, and capital gains on their unearned $135 trillions--all thanks to their puppets is Congress.  What a collossal rip off!  And you thought that taxation without representation was bad.  But now you know it will be 35 times as bad in just 50 years.  When do you plan on telling your grand children about their impending life of slavery to the ultra-wealthy?  There is nothing on the horizon to stop that outcome.     

 A Definition. Wealth is defined by the Federal Reserve as stocks, bonds, and real estate, plus all gains (in the form of dividends, interest, rents plus capital gains) less debts. Thus, it is a fair statement to say that inherited wealth is both unearned and untaxed for as long as it is held and not cashed in. The long-term growth rate from all wealth sources since 1950 is 7.2 percent annually. It takes $4 billion dollars daily just to pay the wealthy their unearned interest on that wealtth. That wealth diversion causes a deficit to the US buget, and so the government must borrow the same amout to the poor just to sustain life.

The Problem. The top 10 percent of US residents hold 90 percent of all our personal wealth. The bottom 50 percent hold less than 1 percent. In dollars the top 10 percent hold $135 trillion. In just 50 years they will hold 35 times as much wealth, or $4.4 quadrillion dollars

Why is this such a big problem? The answer has three parts.

First. The ultra-wealthy today control excessive numbers of legislators at the state and national levels who passed the zero inheritance tax laws. They also passed tax exemption laws on inherited wealth that continues to grow. This means tax-free inherited wealth grows tax-free for as long as it is not sold.

Second, the growth rate of wealth is highly correlated with GDP growth rates. The annual compound growth rate for wealth is likely to remain close to 7.2 percent.

Third, giving a small number of ultra-wealthy persons zero taxes on their immense wealth holdings (both untaxed and unearned) forever is unconscionable. The wealth gap between rich and poor will grow by 35 times in 50 year, and by 130 times in 70 years. The total value of the wealth holdings of ultra-wealthy by 2094 is projected to be 17.5 quintillion dollars. That is 175 followed by 15 zeroes. With such staggering holdings (still untaxed and unearned), the ultra-wealthy will own virtually everything, and the balance of humanity would be totally controlled by them.

A fourth possibility is that a civil war will take place sometime soon, the ulltra-wealthy will be overrun by masses of poor people who strip away of all their wealth, while the value of all that wealth will fall to somewhere near zero. The surviving ultra-wealthy would be charged, tried, and convicted of treason by makeshift juries, and hung in city squares across the country. Economically, such a civil war would be as deadly as a collision from an incoming asteroid.

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Addendum. After more than 20 years of reporting on this subject, I am now taking a break from it. Please take the time to forward it to as many persons and Petition sources as you can. This could be our last chance to begin to close the gap on wealth inequality and stop the most devasting economic outcome in human history.