I am proud to be participating in my first ever Blog Action Day. Our topic is inequality. Sheesh. Couldn't we have started with something a bit less overwhelming? I mean, I don't even know where to start on this one, this topic is so epic.

I've been mulling this over for the past several hours. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Where you are born and where you grow up is completely down to dumb luck.

2. The color of your skin, sadly, still greatly determines what type of opportunities you have in life.

3. Depending on where you live, your gender can be a huge determining factor in the path your life takes.

4. The way you look has a great effect on life success. People whose looks meet the current criteria for beauty are much more successful than those who are average looking.

5. Money begets money. This crap about how anyone can become POTUS is just that, crap. The majority of the world's population stays at the same class and economic status as one's parents. You grow up poor, you end up poor. You start out rich, you end up rich.

I happen to be a white, albeit Jewish, female, born to middle class parents in Chicago. I was fortunate enough to go to college when it was affordable. I am intelligent, resourceful, articulate and would describe myself as average looking. I have never been terribly financially successful, but I have had enough money to live a decent life. I am lucky. I am luckier than the children born in Cabrina Green to single mothers on welfare. I am luckier than the girl born in pretty much any Arabic or African country. I am luckier than the girls working in the sex trade or the girls working 80 hours a week in China in sweat shops making clothes that rich Americans buy. I am well aware of how lucky I am. I could go on and on and on about the horrible inequality in this world.

But, then I started to think about how we could make things more equal. We need to close the gap in the disparity between the people living on a dollar a day with no access to toilets or clean drinking water and those people who make a million dollars a day and live in mansions with swimming pools and servants and go on lavish vacations.

I was thinking about the idea of creating a "basic income," where everyone in the world would be paid just for being alive. It wouldn't be a huge amount of money, but it would be enough to get by on, meeting one's basic needs. If you wanted to increase your income, you could get a job or create a business or invent a product. But, theoretically, it might eradicate homelessness and poverty and lots and lots of crime.

So, I did what any 21st century person would do. I googled it and I discovered that this is not a new nor a novel idea. I discovered that those sane folks in Switzerland who live in such a beautiful part of the world with mountains and chocolate and coo-coo clocks and have more guns per capita than Americans have except that they rarely use them and so they have very few gun deaths or crime, for that matter, are considering this idea. I discovered an article in The New York Times written by an economics reporter, Annie Lowrey, with the following title:

Switzerland's Proposal To Pay People For Being Alive

OMG. This is genius. This seems so sane, so Swiss. I keep reading the article and I discover that an American has actually proposed this idea. Yes, indeedie, a person who lives in these United States; in the land of "free market forces" and "you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps (that is, if you have boots in the first place) if you work hard enough America," which is such complete doo-doo, has proposed the following idea. As long as you are American, over 21, you are not in jail, essentially, as long as "you have a pulse," you would be given $10,000 a year. The name of this man is Charles Murray. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and he wrote a book in 2004, titled: In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace The Welfare State. Sadly, after googling him, I discovered that his ideas are not the least bit altruistic like mine, which are based on the wish to end inequality in this country. He doesn't subscribe to the idea that it isn't fair that we do not all start off in life with the same opportunities. In fact, he believes that all non-whites are actually inferior.

No, Mr. Murray's plan is a purely fiscal one with the sole purpose of reducing welfare in this country and it is surely a very flawed plan. My thinking that this is an equitable solution to eradicating poverty in the world is purely a communistic or socialistic one, depending on which term you care to use. This is the richest country on the planet, the richest country in the history of the world where some of its citizens have more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetimes. Many of our billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are already busy giving a lot of it away. After all, we are all human beings. Let's all share the wealth and live with dignity.

I’ve just posted my Blog Action Day post on #Inequality [www.chicagonow.com/soapboxmomma] take a look & leave a comment #BAD2014"

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