It's been over 50 years since President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, committing Federal Government attention and resources to the longstanding problem of poverty in America. Last year, the 50th Anniversary was "celebrated" by well known granny-starver, Paul Ryan in a special report from his House Budget Committee. Don't bother to read it, however, you've heard it all before from Congresscritter Ryan: we're spending too much, getting too little, and the real solution is to privatize Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, get those lazy moochers out of their government hammocks and deregulate everything in sight.
Should you need a refresher on the War on Poverty, please read the excellent summary here.
Programs Created from the War on Poverty:
-- Social Security expanded for retirees, widows, children, and the disabled.
-- Medicare and Medicaid
-- Food stamps (now called SNAP)
-- Head Start
-- Subsidizing school districts with high poverty
-- Jobs programs
-- Office of Economic Opportunity (dismantled by President Nixon)
-- Work-study programs for college students
Since then, the Earned Income Tax Credit has been added along with a Child Tax Credit to aid working families.
What Paul Ryan doesn't tell you is that our growing poverty, encompassing 15% of America (the largest amount in at least a generation) is being systematically manufactured to grow it even larger. It's been a long road for the oligarchy and their bought and paid for political puppets, but looking back, it's been very systematic and destructive towards the people of this country.
Join me before the orange doodle to untangle the mystery of how they did it.
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Here's how easy it is to create more poor people:
Recite myths about poor people even if there is absolutely no factual basis. Tell those fables often and loudly. Hope that people don't check or care if they're true. Make sure that taxpayers are made to resent "those" people "taking" "their" tax money. Play on that resentment at every opportunity.
Eliminate unions. Ensure that unions are powerless by lax enforcement of labor laws. Make sure that small fines are the only punishment (in the now unlikely event that the company is even charged for a violation) for an employer who violates labor laws, refuses to recognize a union, or fires union activists. Pass laws that make it impossible for unions to exist. Give those laws a catchy name like "Right to Work" that hides their real intent. Without unions wages and benefits don't increase because they're not negotiated. Wages usually decrease and benefits disappear since they're paid on the whim of a CEO whose sole concern is his wallet and his shareholders.
Create a crappy economy so a family that could be supported by 1 person with a decent job now needs 2 breadwinners to make ends meet. With the elimination of unions, wages don't rise and benefits start to disappear which leaves people in debt to pay normal household expenses. Paves the way for scam artists to convince people to sign away the equity in their homes and eventually face foreclosure (Banker donors loved it).
Get rid of pensions. As unions go, so does the collective bargaining that put pensions in place and kept them there. If that doesn't work fast enough, promise people that it's much better for them to put "their money" into a private account. Why, by the time they retire, they could be a millionaire and that money is all theirs ready to be passed on to the kids when they die. Note that this will also help pad the pockets of Wall Street donors in fees and give them extra money to gamble with. And business loved the idea, too, of putting their retirees "on their own" when they stopped working. Who cares about them anyway? Right? And if they haven't saved enough? Well, they can just keep right on working until the day they die (hopefully not on work time since it would interfere with other workers getting their jobs done).
Get rid of Glass-Stegall and allow banking to merge with Wall Street. Customers, being such suckers, won't notice that they're moving their life savings to the casino with no FDIC protection. And with all those extra fees moving even more money into bankers pockets, customers will have less money of their own.
Remove "welfare as we know it" to force people into jobs. Then make those jobs suck with low pay, no benefits, and no opportunity for advancement. Refuse to raise the minimum wage. Welcome to the McJobs nation where working people are doing less well than if there was a welfare program.
Allow funny business with home mortgages so people lose their homes and resort to being renters that pad the pockets of landlords. Remember that the Banks and Wall Street are big campaign donors and getting down payments, mortgage payments and the even the home itself is a dream come true.
Cut cut cut Food Stamps. Don't listen to anyone trying to remind you that most of the people receiving benefits are actually working (remember the decline in wages that were created?), disabled, military families (pay for rank and file soldiers also sucks) or senior citizens whose Social Security checks put them below poverty levels (remember those pensions that don't exist anymore?). Keep on pretending that "those people" are stealing taxpayer money to buy steak and lobster.
Keep giving tax breaks and subsidies to corporations and the already filthy rich. Send the country into budget deficits so you can cut the budget even more by focusing on cutting and eliminating programs that keep people from starving to death on the streets. The more whining about deficits and the national debt, the more bread you can remove from the mouth of a hungry child.
Pass a lot of trade deals that allow good jobs to be shipped overseas for a quarter an hour labor costs, but don't tax the goods that are imported. Spread the myth that there will be "more jobs" with the trade deal. Any jobs that remain can have lower salaries and no benefits since there will be a lot of competition for even the most awful job. Make sure that job loss sections of those trade deals don't get enforced.
Reduce Unemployment benefits and tax the little people receive when they get laid off. Call them moochers if they collect any benefits at all. Blame them for being unemployed rather than greedy CEOs taking advantage of slave labor countries.
Don't raise the minimum wage even as prices escalate. Force people to work more than 1 job. Give them the nasty eyeball when they use food stamps at the grocery store. Reinforce the myth that people are poor because they're lazy.
By all means, make sure that universal health care isn't available. Let hospitals, clinics, drug companies, medical equipment insurance companies and device manufacturers charge whatever they want in a Wild West "your money or your life" atmosphere. Restrict access to, privatize, or eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. You're really on your own, baby.
And, lastly, blame poor people for their poverty. Claim that if they'd just work a little harder, tighten those belts some more, pull harder on those boot straps, and start taking "personal responsibility" that things would be so much better for them.
That, my friends, is their very successful recipe for creating more poor people. They won't stop until we have just a few billionaires on top with the rest of us as peasants living on scraps.
Welcome to "Merika". Remember to mourn for the extinct middle class.
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