I would like to use my position as a well-paid college newspaper columnist to say thank you’ to Marion’s Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. President and CEO Harry L. Crisp II and his wife, Rosemary, for their impressive and appreciated contribution to Saluki Futures. Recently, Mr. Crisp announced his intentions to donate $500,000 to the fund-raising effort to benefit the University’s athletic program and facilities. Saluki Futures also is geared toward the instillation of a new basketball court at SIU Arena.

Sorry no wisecracks or smarty-pants drivel in this column like what you generally have to put up with every Wednesday. Just an honest-to-goodness thanks. And all students and faculty, be they basketball fans or not, also should thank the Crisp family.

The Crisps’ donation is a prime example of why capitalism, for all its obvious faults (disgruntled working class, gangster mentality, McDonald’s Big Macs), inherently is the best economic system developed by humanity. Only in a capitalistic society, such as ours, is it possible for one individual to accumulate enough wealth that he can afford to give away half a million dollars to a university’s fund- raising effort. This wouldn’t be possible under socialism, where nearly everything is financed by the government and taxes are ridiculously high by American standards.

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So despite what we might hear from various entertainers who are able to live uniquely comfortable lives because of our free- market economy, capitalism is not evil. In fact, it has the potential to make life truly better for everyone on the planet.

Now, a number of you probably are wondering if I am a heroin addict or possibly was stoned out of my mind as I wrote this column. But anyone who spends more than 50 percent of his time sober would realize the American version of capitalism is grotesquely out of control. The system is producing an incredible strain on the entire planet. Within our own borders, 20 percent of the population controls 80 percent of the wealth. This isn’t right and it isn’t moral. In fact, it is not the American way.

Capitalism only works for everybody when those who have accumulated vast amounts of wealth, such as the Crisp family, eventually give something back. Philanthropy is a necessary ingredient for capitalism to work and in truth, necessary for it even to survive. The rich only will continue to get richer and the poor only will continue to get poorer for an undesignated amount of time. If current trends continue, the system will collapse on itself probably smashing democracy and various other pleasantries of American society along with it.

If capitalism and democracy are going to survive into the next century, there will have to be an immense redistribution of wealth. It is that simple. An impoverished underclass only will look at the goods of wealth from the outside for so long. When only the wealthy can afford quality education, proper medical care and the other supposed benefits of an industrialized nation benefits that most Americans agree should belong to all Americans simply by birthright an incredible danger for everyone has been created. This is a danger that could have been so easily avoided.

For this immense and necessary redistribution of wealth to take place, one of three things must occur.

1.) The amazingly wealthy begin to fund non-profit organizations and invest in the working class, creating true opportunities for those less-advantaged than themselves.

2.) The government will be forced to redistribute the wealth via extremely high taxes on the rich something few would consider desirable. Given the current incestuous relationship between politics and money, few would consider this to even be possible.

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3.) The wealth will be taken from the wealthy.

Only one of these three possible solutions to the problem can be seen as beneficial to everyone, yet it also is the very one that seems most unlikely. No. 2 seems un-American (whatever that means), and No. 3 cannot happen if we wish to remain as the planet’s premiere nation.

America is the wealthiest nation in the world, yet millions of its citizens live in Third-World squalor. One way or another, this scenario won’t last much longer. Long live philanthropy.