POVERTY AND WEALTH

     I do not believe that the poor are poor BECAUSE the rich are rich.

     It is not true that the sole reason there is poverty is because the
rich are holding down the poor.
 
     Poverty is the result of a complex interweave of incompetencies and
cruelties shared by everyone, including mother nature herself.

     The poor may suffer from the cruelties of the rich and "things as
they are", but they suffer most of all from their own survival
incompetency, which results from original alottment of opportunities,
birth station in life, education, and genetic inheritance, compounded by
the cruelties, heartlessness, toughtlessness, carelessness and prejudice
of the rest of us.

     However even if all these other factors were handled, the poor
would remain poor mainly from the various sources of incompetency
amongst themselves, and if those alone were handled, they would be able
to surmount in general the onslaught of other factors.

     It is fine for the rich to help the poor and even be goaded into
doing so by whatever means, it is not fine for the rich to do what the
poor command them to do.
 
     The poor are barely competent to determine the course of their own
lives, how then are they going to determine the course of the lives of
others, let alone the life of civilization itself.

     They know they need help, but they have no idea what help they
need.

     They need help to become a source of production, not a black hole
of consumption.

     The vast majority of our people are either poor or marginal.  In a
majority vote government they will vote into power a government that
matches both their limited understandings of life and their over
abundant incompetencies in life.

     The rich in fact may have gotten into power because the poor voted
into existence a government that allowed the rich to get into power.

    The rich no doubt must do something about the poor, but they must be
allowed to do what they believe in their hearts is the best thing to do. 
The rich did not get rich by being stupid in their investment cycles.
 
    The poor are a resource waiting to be invested in.  It's fine to
insist that the rich invest in the poor, but you don't allow the poor to
tell the rich what investments to make or how to make them. 

    The rich should never give their money to the poor to manage. 

    They make really lousy financial managers. 

    The poor armed with guns or a government are at best an angry mob
looking to make themsleves feel better with a quick lynching and
a forfeiture. 

    And when all the lynching and forfeiture is done, they will still be
poor, and much the worse off for it. 

    Homer


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