Good Day, it is January 21^st, 2007.

I believe the United States of American citizens believe all citizens are created equal. The United States of America should not be a society where all citizens are born equal and then captured into ranks of superior and inferior status through the means of economic, political, and social prejudices.

The United States of America has given greater political and social equality to its citizens than it has economic equality. What I believe is wanted of the United States of America is an equal system of economic rights.

A capitalist system of economics is based on superiority and inferiority of citizens, not equal citizenship! Wealth is as much a part of equality as education and the ability to assemble are, but, wealth is by far the most disparaged aspect of these three forms of equality within the United States of America.

When George Bush first became President he passed a tax refund that was the equivalent of taking the net worth of Bill Gates and dividing it between every taxpayer of the United States equally. It was 500 dollars each. If one where to distribute the net wealth of the five percent who have most in the United States of America, and, still leave them more than most citizens have, it would amount to at least tens of thousands of dollars for each citizen of the United States of America. That, money, I think, should belong to the citizens..

I believe the material welfare of the United States of America is best measured by the material welfare of all the citizens of the United States of America. Yet those who have superior means fear the loss of their disproportionate wealth and the liberty associated with that wealth. They argue that the security of the United States of America depends on their security. They argue that if they cannot be secure in their excessive and exclusive portion of superior means then neither can the United States of America among the nations. Yet, it is clear, that they will never be less than equal, unless they are confronted with the success of someone of their own ideology. The governmental support of such inequality and its ignorance towards the effects of that inequality are not improving conditions in the United States of America. Such inequality contradicts the actual material welfare of the citizenry.

Faith has become prominent in politics and too often it has been used persuasively, with the constitution, to protect those who have disproportionate wealth from movements of social justice. Where a large disparagement of wealth is found it is often too late to dispute the inequality. Using the constitutional “no law after the fact” or ex post facto, and then the biblical commandment “thou shalt not steal” religious organizations have effectively excluded what has become private property through whatever means, from benefitting the public by erecting barriers of faith so that wealth can be applied from out of the prejudices of its owner. Often token charity disguises values resembling the economist Adam Smith’s rather than any agent of divine providence’s, yet still it is able to qualify as form of “faith-based” giving that allows the disproportionately wealthy to combine religious with governmental protection.

Our government is being applied to protect the wealthy from loss, it can be applied, and should be applied, to protect us all from loss to the wealthy. It is Republicanism that seeks to protect the nation as it is rather than to improve it. However, in not improving the nation, this Republican administration has damaged it. Our leadership has focused on increasing worker productivity, believing that a more productive worker is worth more and earns more. This has not occurred, the focus on productivity maximized not the ability of our citizens to increase their material welfare, but advanced wages for those that can hold wages low within the corporations, a steady source of revenue for the government, and profits for the corporations to maintain themselves as they exist today.

We need new leadership to advance the material and spiritual welfare of this country’s citizens. The leadership we need should not focus on the freedom of cooperatives to do whatever they want with their wealth, it should empower each citizen to be free from economic, political, and social captivity so to improve the United States of American citizen’s condition.

Todd Martin Miller, Ph.D.

Boca Raton, Florida, USA