Blaming the poor

Michael Rives: “Isn’t it strange that people, who are getting public housing funds to pay rent, have four or five cars in their driveways? Some also get public funds to support their children.

“It pays to have multiple children when you cannot afford to support one of them, much less yourself. The child’s father is nowhere to be found, and you and I have to cough up money to feed them.”

Jack O’Connor: “Those statements are aimed directly at low-income minority residents,” comments that O’Connor correctly characterized as repugnant. They were exemplary of the dog-whistle racism and classism that have forever soiled this page.

As Rives demonstrated, his comments were adjacent to long-discredited Malthusianism.

Rives: “Would it help if there were limits on how much government assistance you may receive...?”

1996’s “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” law already limits cash assistance to “no more than five years over a lifetime” while forcing former recipients into precarious and low-wage work.

Moreover, limits are never placed on corporate welfare or destructive multi-trillion tax cuts for capitalists and their corporations. But the we-can’t-afford-it crowd never mentions that.

Per “overpopulation,” the issue isn’t overpopulation. The problem is maldistribution. Each year, humankind creates massive food surpluses, which shifts the question from one of raw populace to one of economics. Those with money eat, while those without money don’t.

But pro-capitalists won’t allow themselves to understand that. So, they cite their fellow human beings, specifically those of color, as the problem because they wish to ignore capitalism and its many irreconcilable contradictions.

It’s easier to blame poor people for our woes rather than the world’s 2,153 typically parasitic billionaires, who have more (socially produced) wealth than 4.6 billion people combined. Capitalism is the problem.

Special thanks to Jack O’Connor for his much-appreciated thoughts.

Guy Marsh

Lancaster