America Has The Richest Poor People in the World

Can we even call people on public assistance in this country "poor" anymore? It’s the ultimate conclusion of the Robin Hood parable: robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Now it’s the people who pay who go without so the people who used to go without can have more.

In other countries the poor people live in holes in the ground, have no shoes and scavenge the dump for what they can. Or they live in corrugated shanty communities with no running water or electricity. Nobody can dispute it, they POOR.

But here in the USA, there are satellite dishes on the roofs of subsidized or rent controlled 3 bedroom apartments with cars less than 5 years old in the drive. There’s a fridge with soda, frozen veggies, hamburgers, chicken, milk and perhaps beer in them. Growing up, I knew what poor looked like but now I have a hard time distinguishing the poor from the “unpoor” these days.

What we used to call "Charity" is now part of the "Safety Net". What used to be given as a temporary helping hand is now a right.  Welfare, and it's not even called "Welfare" anymore, was once handled by local state communities, by people who knew who deserved it and who didn't. But since Welfare has been handled by the nameless, faceless Federal Bureaucracy, they can't be bothered with such things. Their job is to redistribute money. Other people's money.

And for all this, for them, roughly 1/3 of my income is taken in taxes. I would certainly be living better if I got to keep that money for myself and my family instead of it going to somebody else’s. It's especially insulting since THEY didn't earn it, I did.

Is it easier now to take the path of least resistance and remain uninvolved with working society than to strive for betterment and meaningful work? After all, the government will only take a good sized portion of it anyway. Isn’t it easier to just have the government provide? We're only working for the difference between what we get paid and what the system will pay us. Is the difference between what our perpetual unemployment system pays and what a real job would pay actually worth getting a real job? Where is the incentive? The joy of earning your first paycheck fades quickly these days when you look at how much the government takes out of it for taxes. So why bother?

But it is a fool’s paradise. By taking the short money, one will never know how far they could have gone in life or the things they could have had. By joining the ranks of the government dependent, you sure aren’t going to get anywhere. You’ll just be the same. And over time, maybe less so. 

But these aren't poor people we're talking about. People in Bangladesh living on the coast during Monsoon season, they’re poor. What we have here in the U.S. are just wards of the State. A State dependent wearing a government diaper, crawling to the polls every election to vote for their supper and it’s the working people in this country who are stuck wiping their ass when they crap.

It’s now the taxpayer who goes without or pays full price, makes a choice of staying home rather than take a trip, brown bagging it for lunch instead of getting take-out and choosing a state school over a private one for their kids even though they’ve worked for it.

Shortages, inflation and price hikes affect we the taxpayer the most now as the "poor" are insulated from such things. But for how much longer can this go on? Eventually we will reach a point where we just can't pay it anymore and the system will collapse.

What will happen then?