re: #230 Capitalist Tool

What should be done about the poor?

They should be left alone, at a minimum, and treated with the simple human dignity that they deserve. They should be able to keep the wages they earn, and should be secure in their property.

They should NOT be flooded with charitable largesse - it saps the will and is humiliating. The disgrace of our economy is that it is a better deal for them to be bought (or hired, if you will) by the welfare state than it is for them to work. This must change, which means reform of social welfare AND labor laws. The minimum wage is a cruel joke and a farce; I do not think raising it would do much good, but it’s a disgrace that so many people could not house and feed themselves from the takings of a 40 hour work week.

The poor are the primary victims of criminal offenses; their neighborhoods should be flooded with police presence and police protection. I’ve lived in some terribly poor neighborhoods, and the attitude of the police was appalling, to say the least. As if the thugs selling crack on the corner were my fault, or as if the neighbors invited them.

It’s appalling and revolting to me that we have no widespread, secondary education system equipping and training non-college-bound students for productive lives. It’s absurd that we have seemingly unlimited funding for photo-journalism and interpretive dance majors seeking a BA or higher, but cannot scrape together anything like enough money to train plumbers, welders, and electricians. A return to skilled labor and the trades would revolutionize this country’s economy and social system in one generation. Greater funding needs to go toward vocational education and training.

Unions need to revitalize their own training systems and revive their guild and craft traditions. There’s no reason they couldn’t train their own future members; low-interest loans for purchases of tools might not be a bad idea.

Poor people aren’t poor because they’re lazy, or because they don’t want to work. They’re poor because the work they are trained for is pointless and pays nothing. They’re not stupid, but rather, they know there’s no sense in killing yourself at a terrible job for a benefit that is (at best) marginally better than social welfare payments.

And don’t even get me started on the penal system and the waste of lives it causes.