Not a very long entry this time. A new thought came to me this morning. We’ve all been defining “poverty” incorrectly for a very long time. Poverty isn’t lack of money. Sure, that’s part of poverty, but it isn’t the whole thing.
Poverty is the lack of methods by which one can alter one’s society.
Three main methods for societal alteration exist:
1. Bribery (includes campaign contributions).
2. Violence.
3. Voting.
The rich use all three. The middle class uses #3 mostly, with some of #1 and a very little of #2. The poor use very little of all three: they don’t have any money, when they’re violent they’re processed into a system that renders them damaged for the rest of their lives, and they’ve given up on the premise of voting doing anything — a condition that the middle class is coming to believe more and more as well.
However, it is early morning, so I may be missing something. …
4 Comments.
Interesting early morning musings…
However, your coffee didn’t seem to be strong enough, because your conception of voting is totally off track.
Voting is like religion: At best a pacifier, but mostly a way to ensure domination.
If voting could change anything, it would have been outlawed long ago, as bribery and violence are.
But how can you expect a self-proclaimed democrat, even worse an American, to accept that, in a country where democracy is the new opium of the masses, the dictatorship of the stupids, and the best weapon/pretense to subdue the whole world.
My poor man, you are indeed even poorer than what you thought. 😉
“Toward a new definition” that doesn’t involve money sort of implies there was an old definition based on money that made any sense either. But there never has been, not the numbers published in the big media anyway–the original poverty line was based on what somebody thought food would cost for a short-term emergency fifty years ago, plus the entirely made-up idea that Poor People Spend A Third Of Their Income On Food. Like that was some kind of natural law. Politicians took that number and used it to publish statistics, and it’s only ever been adjusted for “inflation,” which has also been a made-up political number since the Reagan era. Ronnie wasn’t going to let anybody do to him what he’d done to Carter with the “misery index.” You’ll never see published numbers like what we saw in the ’70s again, no matter what happens in the real world.
Alex seems to be confusing poverty and impuissance.
The official US definition of ‘poverty’ is having less than half the median income, a silly definition. The usual idea of poverty is having less than needed for a normal lifespan. Extreme poverty means food insecurity, and early death from malnutrition. With just enough money for an adequate, healthy diet, those in slightly less extreme poverty lack safe housing, and so die prematurely from heat, cold, or some other cause easily preventable by adequate housing. In the US, mild poverty typically means inadequate access to medical care, and early death from treatable conditions.
Persons with adequate resources for a decent lifestyle are not usually considered to be in poverty, even if they have no political power.
Of course, those who have no political power are at the whim of those who DO have political power as to whether they will be capriciously thrust into poverty or allowed to live a decent life.
But impuissance is hard to define in a Democracy. As today’s cartoon by Mr Rall shows, at least 65% of the voters favour war. Some believe that all the anti-war protesters have the vote, and their vote counts the same as anyone else’s, but it has no impact on policy since policy is determined by the will of the majority in a Democracy.
However, as Alex correctly points out, the opinion of that majority is influenced by those with great wealth; hence, it might well be that a tiny majority of wealthy, powerful individuals are capable of controlling the voting preferences of the majority and ensuring that a majority of voters will always vote for policies that are detrimental to that majority but which greatly benefit the tiny but puissant minority. If this be true, would the US still be a Democracy or not?
And is poverty of puissance a better definition of poverty than the lack of adequate food and shelter and medical care?
Questions around for 2,500 years (to my knowledge), and still lacking answers.
> The official US definition of ‘poverty’ is having less than half the median income
Unfortunately, it’s not. Google “Orshansky poverty threshold” for the real deal. As I said, it’s absurd.