To Heck with the Poor

The poor.  Don't you get sick of hearing liberals talk about "The Poor" as if they were some special species of human being with inherent virtues the rest of us don't have?  I do.  To heck with The Poor.

I have been poor and I can tell you there is no virtue in it.  Poor people are a liability.  They don't invest in the country, they don't pay their fair share of the taxes, and they consume a disproportionate amount of the public benefits.  They are parasites.

Some people are poor through no fault of their own, just bad luck, but some people are poor entirely because of their own fault.  They deserve no sympathy whatsoever.  Their poverty is a form of justice.  People who are lazy, dishonest and irresponsible deserve to be poor forever.  It's insane to believe, as liberals do, that the situation they themselves created and deserve confers on us an obligation to take bread out of children's mouths and give it to them, less a deduction for the bureaucrats in the poverty industry.

Every decent poor person I've ever known hoped fervently that his poverty was a temporary condition.  He certainly didn't go around bragging about it and labeling himself "The Poor".  His goal was to become part of "The Rich", instead of a permanent lobbyist for "The Poor".

I'm sick of this inverted system liberalism has imposed on us.  You hear people complain, well the poor can't go to college.  The poor aren't supposed to go to college, just like the poor aren't supposed to go to the Riviera. Being poor means not having enough money to do much more than just get by,  so where does some poor person get off claiming he has a right to all the things he can't pay for?

Poor people, like rich people, have their rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.  Nothing in the Bill of Rights says that those who work are obligated to support those who don't.  Nothing in the Bill of Rights says that those who are lucky are obligated to support those who are unlucky.

If a poor kid wants to go to college, then he should do the same thing millions of other poor kids have done, work his way through.  If he can, great.  If he can't, too bad.  There is nothing in the Constitution which guarantees that everyone will be able to do exactly what they would like to do.  A man's goal ought to be to go as far as he can within the limits circumstances imposed on him.  That's better than sitting around bewailing the circumstances.

People used to be ashamed of being poor, but now some poor people are arrogant about it.  To heck with them. I don't say let them eat cake;  I say let them eat anything they can acquire through honest labor--theirs, not mine.

Human nature being what it is, we ought to devise ways to make it tougher on The Poor instead of easier.  As Brother Dave says, when a man is down, kick him and you'll give him an incentive to get up.

I think for example, we ought to take the vote away from The Poor.  They can't pay for government, so why should they have a voice in running it.  We ought to levy a special tax on cheap wine and on low rents.  We ought to tax the unemployed and if they can't pay it, put them in public workhouses to work it off.

When I was a member in good standing of The Poor, I couldn't wait to get out.  Now, too many people are enjoying poverty.  We should see to it that poverty is once more the miserable state it should be.

Charley Reese

Suncoast News/A/June 27, 1981

I have to say I couldn't agree with Mr. Reese more.  I recently ran across this tidbit of wisdom on my old MAC Quadra-610 (22 years old and still working) under the heading of Trivia.  Its even more appropriate today than it was 27 years ago when written by Mr. Reese.  Today we not only have the poor with their hands out with tin cups in hand, we also have millionaires with their tin cups out, and our government (which the rest of us pay for) is ponying up not million$, but billion$ with no end in sight.  What the heck ever happened to being responsible for your own actions?

The financial mess we have today is the perfect embodiment of what results when the government mucks around with the economy for the benefit of "The Poor".