I've been thinking about Frank's post on the concentration of wealth/income and about Clinton's claim that "Republicans favor concentrated wealth."

Maybe this is so, but big government democrats favor the biggest concentration of wealth (and income) of all: the government itself.

Consider this: According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans had a combined net worth of about $955b in 2003. If you extrapolate to the next 135 wealthiest people, I estimate that the 535 wealthiest Americans have no more than $1036b in net wealth.

Ok, this is wealth not income. The two are obviously related but let's work on the income side. Let's assume the wealthiest 535 earn a 10% return on this wealth (I have no idea what return they get but this makes the math easy and as you will see it doesn't matter for the point I'm making.) This comes to a total annual income of about $100b.

Guess what? The 535 members of Congress spent more than twenty times this much in 2003: $2,158b.

So who should we be worried about: The 535 wealthiest Americans who have never had an organized meeting and who have about $100b to spend collectively each year --- or the 535 members of Congress who meet regularly to conspire about how to spend over 20 times this amount?

Even this understates the situation because Congress can regulate us to death as well whereas those rich slobs can't.

Note that I am making no moral claims about who the money should belong to. (I could go on to note that the 535 rich guys are spending their own money while Congress is spending everyone else's money, but I won't.) Even if you believe all wealth (and the income derived from it) is "society's" and if you're concerned about concentrations of power, how in the world can you support big government--the biggest concentrator of power ever created?