Private affluence, public decay

Our American democracy needs a relative equal level of wealth distribution so that the profit makers share their success with the working people who make that profit possible. Roughly before 1950, the highest paid owner/manager of a company didn't consider it fair if he took home a salary more than 12 times the wage of his lowest employee.

That's when America prospered democratically and financially - true capitalism, emphatically not corporatism with its trusts and monopolies, when there was less of a I-Me-My attitude and more of We-Us-Our, America as a team, attitude. In Reagan's time this attitude changed radically for the worst, and now there's such an unequal distribution that I fear a revolution against the plutocracy of this nation at the present time is inevitable.

Wealth purchases congressional re-elections, and congress repays its masters with Wall Street-friendly laws and with perpetual wars to keep the military/industrial armament makers drowning in wealth while the infrastructure of our country goes a-begging.

"Private affluence and public decay" seems the new mantra for our country and Tea Party-people's thinking. What happened to the concept of the Common Good - enshrined in the preamble to our Constitution?

And yes, I agree we all do need to "man up" and provide as best we can for our families, but there's a moral imperative to share appropriately with others compassionately according to the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and out of common sense patriotism, too.

Marion J. Reis

Wheaton