http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/vuk4.html
Step-by-Step Socialism
by Vedran Vuk
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Poverty is whatever the opponents of freedom make it out to be. Have capitalism and semi-free markets not increased the wealth of the poorest in America ten-fold?! The luxuries considered standard to the average U.S. citizen would have been marvels to kings and queens of a hundred and fifty years ago!
If capitalism in another hundred years improves the situation of the poor ten-fold again, the obstructers of liberty will still call it poverty! Not because the lower 20% don’t have enough but because the upper 20% have a hell of a lot more.
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Very insightful. Like the fellow who said that he wanted to come to America because the poor people were fast. Even he realized the fallacy of the "poverty hustlers". You know, those are those people, who appear to make their living out of lecturing us, that we are not doing enough about hunger, poverty, and homelessness.
The bottom fifth is not "poor".
Those souls in the Third World, being starved to death by their respective government, are poor.
Now, I have no doubt, that there are people in America that are "poor". I also know that I see an awful lot of "welfare queens". An, they are not all at the welfare office drawing a gubamint check. We have lots of "welfare" recipients that don't have to endure the indignity of appearing at the welfare office for it.
Let's start by cutting corporate welfare. Price supports! Here's a pet peeve. We have sugar price supports and sugar quotas. Now let me understand this I have to pay more for sugar and anything that contains it so that corporate farms that are growing it are incentivized to keep growing it. AND, since this cost is unavoidable, it's a tax. So everyone pays a sales tax to keep the sugar flowing. Does that make ANY sense at all? We have milk price minimums at the federal level. Again, it's a tax. Does it make any sense at all?
Let's examine all the wealthy welfare. Just off the top of my head, I can target Federal Flood Insurance that encourages wealthy people to rebuild expensive homes on dangerous coastlines at taxpayers' expense. I can site Sam Donaldson's sheep farm in Arizona that gets millions. And, don't forget the minimum wage that helps the unions and the gubamint workers. (And, you thought it was about helping poor people; silly taxpayer!)
So, in short, the bottom 20% needs a tax cut, a cost of living decrease, and the free market to elevate tehir living standard.
There's a bumper sticker quote to the effect that "no one ever taxed themselves to prosperity". Wow is that true!
Reinke Faces Life 