October 10, 2015

Rosemary O’Hara

Editorial Page Editor

The Sun Sentinel

500 E Broward Blvd

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 333394

RE: “State Needs to Solve Growing Poverty Issue” – Some comments on your achingly predictable editorial in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel on poverty and what not to do about it.

Ms. O’Hara,

Let me begin by paraphrasing Hillary the Hecate. [It is obvious that her favorite color is plaid what with her most recent flip-flop on the Asian trade pact. I do believe she has a virtual holograph implanted on the inside of her eyelids to keep her up to date on policy changes.] When she said there was a big story waiting for an reporter to get to the bottom of the “vast Right-Wing conspiracy” about her philandering perjurious husband she set the tone for investigating the biggest day time, no masks on, finger prints all over the place heist in American History.

Six and a half years ago we were promised that if we borrowed $1,000,000,000,000 from the Chinese we would be perpetually farting through silk in a never ending Summer of Recovery. The only danger was the possibility of being hit by an errant shovel from the brigade of Shovel Ready Jobs.

How did that work out?

Today’s tutorial begins with, to cite Orwell, the obvious.

With the possible exceptions of some Trappist monasteries, the United States Marine Corps, and the people who hand out water to runners in the marathon altruism is a policy that every time it has been tried and in every place it has been tired it has failed. It has failed repeatedly and catastrophically. A rational person would believe that it had been consigned to the dustbin of History. Then again a rational person is incapable of understanding the asinine illogical motivations that drive modern American Liberals. 

Follow the bouncing ball.

#1 – Poor people want to get rich.

#2 – Rich people want to stay rich.

#3 – Because of #2 rich people hire poor people.

#4 – Rich people need poor people to stay rich and get richer.

#5 – Poor people work for rich people because of #1.

#6 – Simple so far isn’t it?

#7 – Any attempts to make water run up hill are, as they always are,

doomed to failure.

You commit, over and over and over and over, tgheo classic modern American Liberal mistakes of confusing correlation with causation and letting expectations count more than results.

We know from empirical evidence, from hard, observable facts that the War on Drugs has failed. I know it is impossible for the hubris soaked elite who know that they are right to admit that the War on Poverty is an even bigger failure. To do so would be to admit that man is not perfectible, that he does not respond the way that Lysenko said he would, and that to do so would mean that the social engineer can only drive the train into the ditch.

Having dug ditches in 3 countries I assure you that when you find out that you have been digging on the wrong side of the road there is only one rule to follow, viz.

STOP DIGGING!

What does work, what has worked, what will work it, to cite the great Lord Keynes, is to release the “animal spirits of man”? The best anti-poverty program, the only anti-poverty program worthy of its name, is a job.

That is might result in the wretched excesses of “malefactors of great wealth” – perhaps the Kardashians might be an example – is a risk well worth taken.

We know, using History as a guide, that trying to make poor people rich by making rich people poor is cement headed stupid. [I credit Bernie Sanders with not dodging the issue, “If at first you don’t succeed fail, fail again” is a plan to rally around, don’t you think?

There are only so many ways to slice the pie. If “fairness” is to be the governing criterion there will always be fights at dessert time.

The obvious answer is to bake a bigger pie.

No nation, anywhere, anytime, has ever taxed itself to prosperity. Look it up.

Using Senator Sanders’ cabeza de ca-ca socialism would be, as Churchill said, “standing in a bucket and trying to pick it up by its handle”.

One of the reason schools don’t work is because if you can’t punish failure you can’t reward success.

We need a society dedicate to the proposition that the better we build pour mouse traps the richer we shall all be.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings have spoken.

Get the Hell out of the way!

Kevin Smith