RICH = Monopoly

Hey Barry:

You're probably like me, jes as soon not make them billionaires any richer.

But, y'all doin it every day, jes like the rest of us.

See, ting is this - billionaires don get they bucks unless they get a monopoly on sumthin. A monopoly is when ya gotta go to one person to get what you want.

An, here's what bad bout monopoly. It aint jes that they can charge you more for what you want - cuz you got nowhere else to go - they HAVE to charge you more.

Hold on pardner, y'all might be sayin, whattya mean they HAS to charge more.

Now, I can splain all the reasons they HAS to charge higher prices, but it gonna take ten or twelve hours and you don got that time - I don't either. So, Ima gonna give few examples and a link to sumbuddy who has that explanation on the web:

http://tutor2u.net/economics/content/topics/monopoly/monopoly_profits.htm

Here sum examples - rite now I'm typing in microsoft text editor. Which means I hadda pay Bill Gates. [Except actually I don't cuz my copy is from a friend - score one for our side]. Last time I looked Bill Gates is bout the biggest billionare on the planet. An he greedy and he a monopoly. The EU sued him cuz he's a monopoly.

Here how he work: I loved Windows 98 - worked fine, did every thing I wanted and didn't crash every ten minutes. But now you caint use that no more cuz MS Corp does not 'support' it. Which means that none of the current programs gonna work on good ol 98, which means ya gotta buy a new program - from hisself, Bill Gates.

Gotta another personal thing bout Billy - years ago I wrote a book, lotta work an lotta fun. Nobuddy wanted to publish it cuz it wasn't very good. It was a labor of love. Point is this: I wrote it in some program - wordperfect or sum such, an when I turned around, Uncle Billy had bought the program and didn't 'support' it no more. Now I cain't even read my book cuz its in that dead program.

Les move on to the the oil companies. You drive round - you support big oil. An itsa oligopoly - which is a monopoly with friends. Once in while ya might see some gas station open up and charge real low prices cuz they wanna make friends or use the gas price as a loss leader.

They gonna last a week wid dat idea. Here's what gonna happen. Big oil marketing rep gonna come round an say - 'ya know you cain't buy no more gas unless you raise the price. Itsa free country an you can do what you want, but you will charge the price we decide or you won't get gas.'

Nother thing bout big oil - they say the prices are set by the 'market'. Thas a crock. Nex time prices getta little low cuz they too much gas around, they gonna be a refinery shut down because of 'maintnance'. And, surprise, surprise, the price gonna go back up cuz they a 'shortage of gas'.

OK, you can find your own examples. You can make it a game for the kids.

Point about it is this: we all paying so much to support the billionaires that we caint buy any stuff. An if we caint buy any stuff, the economy gonna stay bad.

Thas where we is right now.

An thas another ting thats' bad about the RICH - they stealin so much from us that we is too broke to support the economy.

Ya gotta fix the system Barry, so the monopolists go away.

Your pal,