February 2011
8 posts
3 tags
Wealth is not "made", it is taken
You don’t get money by being fair. You get money by swindling. You sell goods for excessive profits to people with no options but to buy from you, you cheat your employees out of a fair wage, you attempt to get people to trade money for a worthless or near-worthless product. All wealth involves taking advantage of ignorance, weakness or greed. You can make a profit by being fair, but you can...
There is nothing special about your destitution
Poor Americans treat poverty as if it is some great trial that they and they alone can understand. The truth is that most of this world’s population is destitute. There is nothing particularly shameful or unnaturally horrible about being in need. Life is not a meritocracy, in the sense that the willingness to work hard alone is not a guarantee of a living wage. Never was, never will be.
5 tags
Should the poor hate the rich?
Yes, they should. Any other state of affairs is unnatural. Am I advocating envy? No, envy is the basest human reaction to inequality. No, not envy. Envy is for the greedy, the people who love the state of unfairness, just not their position in it. The hate should not be borne of covetousness, it should be borne of the knowledge that you have been wronged, that wealthy have power that they have not...
4 tags
Something to understand about being poor...
What people who are not, and never were, poor don’t understand is that a lot of what is considered “self-destructive” behavior on the part of poor people is actually necessary in order to survive poverty in the short term. The worst enemy of the poor person is hopelessness, the best friend is the temporary escape.
3 tags
Should you want to be rich?
It is, obviously, a popular desire. It is usually unattainable. Like all popular aspirations it is poorly thought-through. Attempting to become wealthy is a recipe for a life spent in fruitless pursuit of something completely not worth it. Most people’s perception of large amounts of money is their tax-refund, or that bonus from work. They have no understanding of real wealth and no idea of...
1 tag
Who enforces the stigma of poverty?
The middle-class mostly. Nobody hates the poor and poverty more than the people who live their lives around escaping it. of course, most don’t. The best they can do is simply not be poor, rarely do they ever attain actual wealth. These are the people who have successfully been converted to the view that poverty is the mark of inferior people. The middle-class is the enforcer of the rules of...
3 tags
Should you be ashamed of being poor?
Of course not. The conditions that determine most poverty were existence long before your birth. Shame is the effect of poverty’s stigma. It is what the entitled wealthy want you to feel. If you are ashamed, if you blame yourself for being poor then you believe what they want you to believe. You see yourself to be inferior to them. The stigma of poverty is about creating a slave class.
3 tags
The stigma of poverty
Supposedly it is your fault. This is how the rich tell themselves that they were always entitled to their wealth and that their privilege is deserved. Where the stigma does not or should not exist they will do everything in their power to apply it anyway. The rich need to believe that they deserve to be wealthy. By being poor you are inferior, you are given to criminal and crass behaviors.