Reply #14: The way the issue of poverty is framed is wrong [View All]

[callady]

the focus needs to be on eliminating wealth of which poverty is the necessary offspring. Another progeny of wealth is ecocide.

It's not the fact that people don't have enough money it's the fact that they are required to have so much. We can't just keep ratcheting the figures up, rather we need to do the right (meaning left)-radical
thing and focus on why we need to have so much. Eliminating rent might be a start.

This whole issue of fighting poverty obscures the fact that it is our expected standard of living that is the deeper problem and seems to allow the grotesquely wealthy hide in the lurches as we focus on handing out a few more crumbs to the needy-meaning me. Yes, of course that $25 extra a week can be a matter of survival for the parent/child in East St. Louis etc. so let's fight for it. But let's also not be satisfied with negotiating over the terms of our slavery.

In total support of your blog and anything anyone does to bring to the light the gross economic disparity in this country. we desperately need to ratchet everything down starting at the top. The only thing that can make that happen in my view is mass action from the grassroots.

The notion of the "middle class" is not healthy for our perceptions of stratification and is a nightmare on the biosphere.

We could all live elegant lives in poverty if allowed to by the ruling class. They will never allow for that so the issue must be forced.