The Election is Coming

I spend several days a year thanking people leaving my polling place for voting. I don't ask their party affiliation, but simply thank them for showing up. A couple of weeks ago, in the primary which had several hard fought races, about 16 percent of the registered voters showed up at our polling place; there was early voting, so my precinct probably beat the 18 percent turnout for the county,

The November election is important. The Obama administration was able to pass only a limited number of bills, albeit some very important ones. The Democrats controlled both chambers of the Congress as well as the White House, yet only passed a portion of their legislative wish list. Decreasing the Democratic majority or electing a Republican majority to one or both chambers is not going to empower the government to do more to solve the problems facing this country.

One thing that concerns me is that income distribution in the United States has become less and less even over the last few decades. This trend is generally correlated with Republican control of government, while Democratic control is correlated with more even distribution of income and wealth. The inequality is now at a level not seem since the eve of the Great Depression. That inequality raises the probability of internal conflict as the poor feel the society is more and more unfair. In a period of high unemployment and recovery from economic crisis, social unrest is especially unwanted.

Come out and vote!