I have 6 kids. Sometimes, they work together to completely destroy our play room. It looks kind of like a tornado ran through the land of imagination, doesn’t it?

Anyhow, whenever this happens we have a mandatory “clean up time”. Everyone has to work together to clean the playroom. Our 7-year-old is capable of accomplishing more “clean up” than her 5-year-old sister…who is capable of accomplishing more than her younger sister…who is capable of accomplishing more than her 4-year-old brother…etc. Our 2-year-old pretty much gets a free ride. We’re just happy if he avoids re-tornado-ing the room. They are each able to accomplish different “amounts” of cleaning than each other….but they all finish the job together.

Our country’s financial picture looks even worse than my playroom. We all created the mess. Now, it’s time to clean it up. Everyone keeps talking about solving the problem by increasing taxes solely on those who have greater financial ability to help out. In other words, “let’s solve the problem by making the 7-year-old do all of the cleaning for us”. Well, that’s pretty much what we’re already doing (this chart is interesting: http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3652). According to the Tax Policy Center, nearly half of our country pays no income tax. None. I don’t care how you slice it, that’s a massive problem. Nearly half of our country doesn’t share ownership in the problem.

If you are a parent, you know why we force all of our kids to clean. You know why we don’t force only our 7-year-old to clean. That wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right.

Wow, Josh, are you really comparing minimum wage workers to toddlers? No, I’m comparing their financial capacity to help the problem to a toddler’s mental and physical ability to help clean.

In related news….now that my kids know that they will be responsible for cleaning up their messes, they are all much less likely to create giant messes in the future.

Bottom line: this isn’t a rich people problem or a poor people problem. This is an American problem.

So, what’s the solution? I think my boy Dave Ramsey has the right idea: http://www.thegreatrecovery.com/live?ictid=lm1.tgr.announce.