Optimism

I just repositioned my stock portfolio, which is invested in an IRA in Vanguard mutual funds, and basically exchanged money between the same funds I have owned all along, so by doing that have re-purchased many shares at a lower price. Whether that will ultimately improve my profit will depend on what the economy does in the next ten years, but I sense that the market bottom has been reached and I do not want to miss whatever rebound occurs. Because the federal budget is consumed by three major expenditures: Social Security 21%, Medicare 21%, and Defense 20%... it is clear that entitlement programs make up the bulk of our debts rather than the "earmarks" and "subsidies" that politicians babble about. Now people can and do argue every which way about whether we should be paying for elderly people's medicines and food stamps and all that, but to me the question is whether we can afford them, and there is no doubt that yes we can, IF there were more equitable distributions of wealth. There is NO rational justification for the skewed priorities capitalism has produced, whereby a radio talk show personality or a ball player or a writer or a surgeon should be paid a million dollars while the Essential occupations which benefit society and produce something tangible-such as farmers and mechanics and-are paid marginal wages. Even teachers, who commonly cry poverty, are among our highest paid workers when one considers the actual hours worked per year. Most people-particularly those in power who decide such things-frequently use terms such as "parity" to justify what they earn without ever examining honestly whether any of them actually deserve it; they assume that because so and so makes this much then they should too. Yet the society can survive without ballplayers and doctors and politicians, but farmers? or garbage men? Perhaps the 100 Billion dollars that Wall Street financiers gave themselves as bonuses over just the last 3 years(...no doubt skimmed off potential profits that Could have been distributed to IRA's and 401ks) could be distributed to the truly needy and there would be plenty of money to be shared among people-with no need for new taxes. How about it Brad Pitt, or Rush Limbaugh, or the rest of you? Rather than attend charity fund raisers, just refuse your salary for the rest of your life and donate that to the starving in Haiti. As globalization spreads the wealth between nations, there will be a lot more shifting of power in the coming decades, and unfortunately the United States may not be one of the winners. It depends on whether we refocus our priorities and decide to take action in some critically needed areas, not least of which is weaning ourselves of foreign dependencies and reinvesting in some good old fashioned elbow grease.