Should there be rich people? I don’t think so. I remember once way back on hipmama a mama felt I was saying there should be no poor people, like I was insinuating that poor people shouldn’t be allowed to exist. She misunderstood exactly what I meant. I do feel there should be no poor people. Poverty should not exist, it is insane that it does. Nobody should be poor anywhere on this planet, there is enough for everyone, there truly is. It is crazy that there are children in the world today who will be dead by sundown because of starvation, because as a species we refuse to help our own. If this means that resources are distributed so that no one can be rich, so be it. I do not think there should be a wealthy class, period. For that matter, I do not understand why some work is valued more than others. I am puzzled why, for example, our culture values movie stars more than teachers.

We act as if people who are rich have somehow earned their money; that they worked harder or smarter than poor people or something, and that is a lie from beginning to end. The riches come from not only valuing some work more than others, it goes back all the way to stealing land, enslaving people, and exploiting and murdering people. So today if you can ‘get over’ from legally exploiting people, it’s all good; it’s the American way. That is what this country was founded on, and this has somehow gotten laundered over the centuries into some perverted ‘work ethic’ belief that if you just work hard enough, YOU TOO can become rich, if you just apply yourself and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This is why it is often folks with barely a pot to piss in who defend the economic class system with the most vigor in this country…who defend the rich, the right to be rich, and the right of the rich to produce (usually at a high personal and financial cost of their workers) stuff and to buy stuff. It’s because they believe it can happen to them someday. Somehow, their being rich.

The wealthy class have the rest of us screwed from beginning to end. I talked with a woman recently whose decent-paying job was sent overseas (she now works a low-paying job and is desperately looking for better) and whose husband is in the war risking his life so that we (the U.S) can control (read steal and profit from) a country’s oil. She was actually grateful there was a wal-mart nearby. She knew that (among wal-mart’s many other crimes) key wal-mart investors also were invested in her prior employer who took her job overseas so that they’d only have to pay their workers $2 a day, but she was still grateful. Why? Because the food there was so cheap and she was on a tight, day-to-day budget of providing food for her family. This is how the wealthy class operates. They set it up so we have little money, then we are grateful to get back alive from fighting their wars, then we are grateful when we can spend a few bob on necessities at their stores. This is 2006 and it’s like some Grapes of Wrath* mess happening, and no one is talking about it.

The rich class in America has killed more people than crack cocaine, yet we lock up crack dealers and reward the CEOS of major corporations with crazy money and give them a slap on the wrist if they actually get busted doing their dirt. If they get prison time, they even have special jails for them!!! It’s…Insane. If revolution ever comes, it will be because the American people collectivey turn their back on the lie and open their hearts and minds to sharing. Forget the bootstrap fairy-tale.

We don’t need to pull ourselves up alone. We need to pull ourselves up together. Think about that stupid myth literally. Have you ever tried doing it, literally?? Imagine putting on a pair of boots with laces, sitting on the ground and getting yourself upright just by pulling on your bootstraps. Kinda Herculean in effort, right. Now imagine someone who is already standing upright coming along and giving you a hand. Much easier right. Now imagine you 2 going along and helping someone else. Even easier. Now imagine you 3 going along and helping yet another person. Oh boy! It’s a breeze with this many people helping, right! You can even split into teams. And each team goes on to help and form more teams. And so on and so on and so on until…there is no one left all alone on the ground trying in vain to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Now imagine doing this literally with money. If the rich (the people who are already standing) went around literally giving folks a hand, what would our country look like? I think it would look like this:

Every child would go to good schools like the schools the children of the rich currently go to

Every recently adult child would go to college or get up in a trade or business or whatever they wanted to do like the recently adult children of the rich do

Everyone would have fantastic medical care

Everyone would live in a nice home

Everyone would have enough to eat

Crime would be greatly reduced

Everyone would live longer and when they got elderly and infirm would be gently cared for.

and more

This is not some impossible dream. We could have this now. But we must reject the lies and decide once and for all that everyone deserves this way of life, not just rich people. And if this way of life means that no one can buy a 50k ring or a thousand dollar baby bag, then so be it. I’d much rather live in that world than this one, how about you?

* Woody Guthrie wrote The Ballad of Tom Joad the night he saw the film. He described the film in a column:

“Shows the damn bankers’ men that broke us and the dust that choked us, and comes right out in plain old English and says what to do about it.

edited 11/16/06 to add:

The Two Bums

The bum on the rod is hunted down
As the enemy of mankind;
The other is driven around to his club
And feted, wined and dined.

And they who curse the bum on the rods
As the essence of all that is bad
Will greet the other with a winning smile
And extend him the hand so glad.

The bum on the rods is a social flea
Who gets an occasional bite;
The bum on the plush is a social leech,
Blood-sucking day and night.

The bum on the rods is a load so light
That his weight we scarcely feel,
But it takes the labor of dozens of men
To furnish the other a meal.

As long as you sanction the bum on the plush,
The other will always be there,
But rid yourself of the bum on the plush
And the other will disappear.

Then make an intelligent, organized kick,
Get rid of the weights that crush;
Don’t worry about the bum on the rods,
Get rid of the bum on the plush!
Author unknown, performed by Utah Phillips

Continued: No Poor People

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