Wealth Distribution Association

The Wealth Distribution Association is a program that was invented to insure everyone's financial well-being as much as possible and to prevent poverty.

Isabelle Olsen
The Wealth Distribution Association, or WDA, was founded by Isabelle Olsen in 2042. At 42 years old, Olsen was a progressive democratic candidate in the 2040 election. It was during her campaign in which she proposed the Wealth Distribution Association. She strongly believed that wealth inequality was a very important issue not only in the US, but all over the world.

Olsen's beliefs
In an interview with Isabelle in 2039, she stated, "I'm truly amazed that this has been an issue for so long, and yet the amount of people who pay it any mind is so scarce. There are billionaires who could bring thousands of people out of the depths of poverty by themselves. Just imagine how much less homelessness, how much less hunger, how much less disease there would be if the people with so much money gave some of their wealth to people who truly need more money. There are some people, for example, that we could take enough money from them to pay an ordinary young adult's entire college tuition, and I don't think they would even notice that any money was gone. Some people have so much to give, but they just think that if they have any less money, their status will be ruined." Isabelle said she believed that a person's power should not depend on the amount of money they had. Olsen thought that if celebrities and politicians and other wealthy people gave lower income people that were in need enough money to get on their feet, then our world would be much more peaceful.

The plan
She proposed that to start the process of putting the WDA into action, every employed person living in America would fill out a survey reporting their current salary, and answering various other questions about their financial standing. The government would make the salaries as close to equal as possible. She made it clear that there would still be a difference in the salaries of people with part-time versus full-time jobs, and that there would be higher salaries for harder jobs and longer working hours. The other expenses that people have trouble dealing with in their everyday lives would be dealt with by people who have enough money to pay for those expenses and fix those financial struggles without having to deal with any struggles of their own after doing so. This system applied to the entire country. The steps from there on out were relatively simple: When any person in the country was having a financial problem that they could not safely solve on their own, they would match them with another person who was able to give them enough money to solve the problem, and then a bit extra to prevent it from happening again. "This system would reply heavily on honesty," said Olsen in a later interview in 2039. "But I feel that if this was the way things were, then people would have no reason to lie. They wouldn't need more money, so they wouldn't have to pretend that they needed more money. They wouldn't want more money to be powerful, because power would depend on a person's good ideas and qualities, and if they have what it takes to be in a power position. But it would also mean that people can not think that they can stop working hard because they would get paid a livable salary no matter what. If people had that mindset then the whole system would collapse. They would have to keep doing business as usual, but they would be receiving the amount of money that they deserved for their hard work." Another important part of the plan is that a portion of the extra money from the people with higher paying jobs would be used to ensure healthy working conditions for everyone.

Putting the WDA into action
Olsen won the 2040 election against republican candidate Rodney Redfield. In February, about a month after she was inaugurated, she declared that the Wealth Distribution Association would be put in place. There were some mixed feelings about this at first and some protests, but by 2042, it seemed like everyone was on board. It continued to work just as Olsen had hoped, with extremely minimal obstacles. After seeing the positive change the WDA caused in America, several other countries decided to begin using the system as well. Today there are very few countries left that do not use it. Many people would say it is impossible to deny that the world would be a very different place today if it was not for Isabelle Olsen's idea. When asked if she thought this was true, Olsen replied, "I agree that things would be very different, but it wasn't really my idea. I think anyone could have thought of this. It's just that a lot of people only considered the possible consequences that it could bring, rather than the incredible benefits that it would have. I'm also sure that plenty of people agreed with me before now. All I am is a representative for a large group of people who have the same beliefs as I do. All I did was speak up."

Written by Ivy on January 11, 2090