A letter to the rich and wealthy.

Dear Members of the top 10%:

Do you not realize that you're shooting yourselves in the feet? If you want people to spend money so you can take it, they have to have the money to spend! You make it impossible for 75% of the American population to have enough money left over to spend on frivolous stuff, then sit in your house wondering why the economy is crashing and your fortunes are disappearing.

In order to spend money, there must be money to spend.

1- If you don't pay your workers enough to cover their expenses and still have some extra, how are they supposed to spend money on your products?

2- If you don't pay for the maintenance in your stores, who is going to want to shop there?

3- If you make the entry level jobs require experience, how are the people who have no experience supposed to get some experience so they can do the entry level jobs?

Seriously, those of you on top need to WAKE THE FUCK UP. If you don't take care of your car, it breaks. If you don't take care of your house, it becomes unsuitable to live in. If you don't take care of the working class, you don't have any customers to give you money!

Read your history books. The people on top seem to forget the lesson their ancestors learned over and over and over again. If you push the bottom down too far, everything falls apart.

If a job is classified as entry level, NO EXPERIENCE SHOULD BE REQUIRED. That's what entry level means! Sure, they should have an education, and not go into it with absolutely no knowledge of what's going on. But they should not need 5 years of experience with the most recent version of Microsoft Office, when the most recent version of Microsoft Office was LAST YEAR. And yes, I have seen that as a requirement for some jobs.

If you make it impossible for new people to enter the field, when all the current employees retire who will take over? The people you turned down because they were too young and inexperienced? Well guess what? Now they're older but still just as inexperienced! It's harder to teach someone who is older something new. That's something almost everyone acknowledges as a fact. So if you have a 20-something year old applying for the job and they don't have any experience... LET THEM GET SOME FUCKING EXPERIENCE AND HIRE THEM! Sure, you might need to spend a month training them. Sure, they're going to fuck up a bit. But at least they'll be ready to take over when you need them to!

So here's why the economy failed:

1- prices were too high. 75% of the country couldn't afford the products on the shelves, so they didn't buy them.

2- Credit was too easy. People couldn't afford to buy the things they were buying, but they needed to buy them so they turned to credit cards.

3- Entry level jobs had an experience requirement. Anyone just graduating college ended up taking the minimum wage jobs that don't require a college degree because the degrees they got were useless.

4- theft and dishonesty. People stealing from others and scamming others took money from people and businesses. People who were scammed now can't buy things, and businesses can't afford to pay their workers.

5- Blaming lack of sales on employees. If only 5 people can afford a camera, then at most you can sell 5 cameras. So why blame the employee if he or she only manages to sell 4 cameras?

6- Cars. For some odd reason, a car costs 5 years of wages. And they are completely broken within 2 years. Dude, this is a bad model. If a person can only afford to buy a car once every ten years, but has to buy one once every three years, they're screwed! If you take a look at how much America spends on car payments every year, I bet you'll be surprised at just how big a percentage of American income that is.

America, if you value this country, this is what needs to happen. Prices need to fall all over, but it can't come out of the bottom level paychecks. If you take it out of the bottom level paychecks, they still won't be able to buy things despite the reduced prices.

Why? A person making minimum wage has about $30 a week left over after bills for gas and groceries. If you lower prices, they might have a bit more left over after bills. If you then lower their paycheck, they're back to only having $30 a week. CAN YOU LIVE ON $30 A WEEK?

But of course my advice is going to go unread by the people who actually need to take it. And if they do, they'll probably hate me for speaking the truth.