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In reply to the discussion: Why Poor People Stay Poor [View all]Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)I am poor. I have always been poor. There have been times when Kat and I have literally had to sell possessions (mainly our dvd collection) to keep the heating turned on. Being disabled now, I'm reliant on benefits (welfare, for you on teh wrong side of the Atlantic). I have heard numerous diagnoses of what's wrong with poor people, a hundred ways to blame the poor for their own poverty. Booze, drugs, attitude, education, a hundred things the poor are supposed to do or not do, a hundred ways to blame the poor for their poverty because our culture still thinks in Dickensian terms, that the poor are poor through some failing of theirs. For the last few years, our Xmas presents have been financed by loans from a slightly dodgy company that charges exorbitant interest rates. Maybe it's not so wise to take those loans but damn it, we *deserve* one day off from being poor at least once a year. I *know*, because the press constantly tells me, exactly how much the public have been trained to despise those on benefits. There have been assaults and suicides because of that loathing and our government is just trying to exacerbate that to justify the sadism of their cuts to the welfare state. This government (both US and UK) seem to believe that if you just punish the poor in harsher ways, if you just whip them some more, they will all find those jobs which will magically appear and everything will be sunshine and unicorns.
Here's the real reason people are poor: The capitalist system requires winners and losers. The system requires a certain level of unemployment to keep wages down. Most of us cannot simply move to a completely new area to find work. We have family or kids or a support structure that we cannot leave. Our skills are outdated if we even have skills in the first place and Lord help you if you picked the wrong degree because you only get one shot at it (normally, I found a loophole which has since been closed) and you have to live with that choice forever.
So here's the real reason people are poor: They don't have enough money. Because our culture thinks that it is an acceptable way of doing business to fire half the staff and force those remaining to work twice as hard. Because it's not just teenagers on minimum wage anymore, it's everyone. Because government *should* redistribute wealth and the rich have gamed the system far too long. They own the government, they own the courts, they own the companies and they own the press. And maybe it's going to take guillotines before the bastards give the rest of the world a chance.
Thanks to a friend's incredible generosity (you know who you are and you are wonderful), our xmas is going to be great this year. We get a little time off from being poor. And I don't have the words to explain how wonderful that is.