Tuesday, September 13, 2011

You Call this Poverty?

I write this post from Manila, the Pearl of the Orient. Manila is not a bad place - I have seen worse, but let's face it, there is poverty all around me. Like Mexico City, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Buenos Aires or Paris (all cities that I know reasonably well), Manila has very wealthy enclaves (OK, maybe Kathmandu doesn't have one of those) that are a long baseball (Go
Giants, beat LA!) throw away from people living in abject poverty. And on this short trip I have seen a lot of the poverty and not much of the wealth.
So I was interested (I would say "surprised", but not much surprises me nowadays that comes from the MSM or a government agency like the Census Bureau) to see that there are record numbers of people living in "poverty" in the US (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/record-poverty-last-year-as-household-income-dips-2011-09-13). Of course how you define "poverty" is rather important, but that is not something the MSM wants to highlight for the most part. So check out the following article from two researchers from the Heritage Institute (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/09/13/understanding_poverty_in_the_us.html) that puts American "poverty" in context. The "poor" for the most part have big-screen TVs (most likely bigger than the one we have), computers, cars, shelter with a/c and heat and sufficient food. Is that really poverty? No, of course it isn't. It may not be as much as other people have, but it is not poverty. But isn't that the point of the left nowadays? To "level the playing field" so those with "more" (whatever that means) will "pay their fair share" (like we don't pay enough already).
I have rarely asked the question in my travels, but my assumption is that a substantial majority of the world's population would be overjoyed to live in the "poor" America that is being presented. And my assumption is that the answer to the "poverty" problem for many is to take more from the $200,000/year "millionaires" and make them pay their "fair share" to those who have less - in large part because they probably did not work very hard and are content to live as they do with government assistance.
I leave Manila today for Los Angeles and can't wait to get home to my poverty-stricken country. I just wish the MSM would highlight how good the "poor" have it in the US (good luck with that) and I laugh at people that take these "statistics" as a call to arms to "do something", which usually involves taking from those with more in order to make life more "fair".

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