Sign of the times

The campaign sign still is there. That is more than one can say for the scoreboard at Howard Wood Field.

I hadn't expected the sign to make it through the night when one of the kids brought it home and asked whether she could plant it in the front yard. The sign suggests to the world – or at least my corner of it – how to vote on perhaps the most divisive issue of our times. But there it stands untouched weeks later.

I was taught never to discuss politics in polite company and never to tell others how I intended to vote. One is guaranteed to kill a good time. The other is nobody's business. So I've never been someone who sticks campaign signs in the front yard.

In fact, if you don't count the sign for the family member who ran for an elected office a couple of years ago (and probably would have won if she had a better campaign manager than the one whose photo is at the top of this column), this is the first sign I've ever put up.

I'm tempted to make a habit of it.

Twenty-five years ago, 81 percent of the wealth in America was in the hands of 20 percent of Americans. In 2004, this slice of the population had increased its take to 85 percent. When the Federal Reserve Board releases its next Survey of Consumer Finances sometime this winter from which these percentages were gleaned, the top is expected to have grabbed an even greater chunk.

In recent weeks on the campaign trail, presidential candidate John McCain has been suggesting to whoever will listen that opponent Barack Obama is hell-bent on spreading wealth from one group of Americans – the well-heeled – to another group of Americans – the working class.

What McCain fails to mention is that this is precisely what has been occurring, except it has been the richest who have been reaping the rewards of redistribution.

It is hard enough to stomach the acrimony in politics today. So pervasive has the negativity become that pollsters have started to measure it. For me, however, the nastiness is nothing compared to the distortions and flat-out fabrications candidates make knowing full well they're lying through their teeth.

In 1983, upper-income Americans had 2.5 times more wealth than middle-income Americans and 15 times more than lower-income Americans. In 2004, upper-income Americans had 4.5 times more wealth than middle-income Americans and 27 times more than lower-income Americans.

No issue – except the one on the campaign sign posted in my front yard – riles Americans more than who owns what and how much of it. Raise the topic and the entire staff at Fox News starts foaming at the mouth, screaming "socialism!" and invoking Adam Smith. One is better off kicking a grizzly bear in the shin.

But regardless of who wins Tuesday, it seems there are a couple of important questions in need of a couple of important answers:

In a nation that has the highest productivity in the world and where the citizens work harder than anywhere else on the planet, why is the distribution of wealth becoming even more heavily skewed?

What are the benefits and the costs to the nation – and capitalism – when wealth is concentrated?

If, like McCain, you are having trouble sleeping at night because you fear that Obama, if elected, will shift the wealth in America, you can relax. It's already happened.

That's a message that needs to be on signs everywhere.