On Food Stamps and Disability Benefits

[mntleo2]

72. Poverty is an INSTITUTION, not a "choice"!!!!!

People who hate the poor refuse to acknowledge that the Poverty Institution is embedded in our society and that they themselves depend on the poor. As I have often done in the past, let me reiterate and count the ways the upper class depend on the poor:

From Websters:

in·sti·tu·tion
a well-established and structured pattern of behavior or of relationships that is accepted as a fundamental part of a culture, as marriage: the institution of the family.

Institutions remain firmly ensconced in societies because they benefit the upper classes in spite of the horrible damage this institution promotes. The elite WANT more and more people to be poor so they can use them to enhance bank accounts with exploiting people for low wages, mega-non-profit "tax breaks" that are in essence a private Cayman Islands for their $Millions, employing the upper classes as "gatekeepers" in government, the academics who crunch numbers and "study" the poor, and foundations also designed to be a Cayman Islands for tax shelters as well as employing the elite to "fund" poverty in mega-non-profits (who in essence spend most of their "donations" on themselves). Other embedded institutions that exist now and in the past are the Institution of Slavery and the Institution of Racism, etc.

The Institution of Poverty is kept in place by basing its "rationale" on the exploitation of racism, sexism (including LGBTQ),classism, ageism, and disabilities. It is important to keep this exploitation under cover and pretend they are not the reason for this exploitation, so laws that are rarely enforced are implemented in order to pretend these conditions of poverty no longer exist.

See, while people were wildly applauding Welfare Reform they were so sure that this law did not apply to them. So while trying to hide their prejudices ~ and using racism to the max to pass this sharia law under the assumption that being poor meant "being brown". They assumed wrongly that the Institution of Poverty was *not* the reason for poverty, that being poor was a "choice because the poor "chose" to "be lazy". The middle class was duped into believing that this law would just be for poor people, not THEIR "hard working" little butts. Well guess what? In America, it is illegal to pass laws for just one segment of the population, when laws are made, they apply to EVERYBODY. I might add here, that there were many people on DU who I have sparred with over the decades about this who maintained the same attitudes. But well, sad to say now that they are in the same boat, they now understand better what activists like me had been trying to tell them for years.

The truth is the whole society is based on poverty because the upper classes depend on the poor for their own comforts. The poor are the ones who serve the upper classes with low wages that have always been depressed. Now that the the falling middle class are vying for these same jobs, well suddenly they are all surprised that the Welfare Reform they wildly applauded in the 1990s has become their fate. Mega-non-profits use the poor in order for the rich to use them as their own private tax shelters, where "donating" merely means they give their riches and then get it back in tax breaks. They in essence "privatized" charity in order to use the poor, the disabled, women, seniors, and people of color as their money-makers and slave labor, making sure there is no way out. And BTW, the poor pay the highest tax rates in every single state http://www.itepnet.org/who pays, If in each state, just ONE of those richest paid the same rates as the poorest among them, they would take their own states out of deficit and STILL keep most of their $Billions.

You will notice that for those shills like Ryan, Rand Paul, Fox Ewes and their ilk that "charity giving" is almost always mentioned as 2nd on the list whenever they scream about the importance of tax breaks for the rich. They well know that this "donating" merely means more money they keep where they can stash more of their riches and that "charitable giving' is not donating at all. These mega-nons are just corporations that do not pay taxes in order to give punitive, miserly "assistance" to the poor when in fact they pull in about $54,000-67,000 per client while giving on the average of only $2000 in direct services.

These mega-nons also employ bored rich relatives in 6 figure "jobs". You can literally take a Stairway to Heaven in these places. As you ascend, the lower floors are where the broken equipment and furniture lay and the poor work for wages that would be just a dinner at an exclusive restaurant for their "Executive Directors". As you go upwards the offices are nicer for the middle class where the case managers, social workers, accountants ,and the like work as gatekeepers for the rich. The upper floors are where there is leather everywhere, original art, and new equipment. Nobody (including the government pouring $Millions in grants into these charities) asks where this money is going because they know where it is going: into the pockets of the rich who mete out employment for the middle class to do their dirty work as gatekeepers who can keep the hatred of the poor alive (and their own incomes made by living off the backs of the poor) by secretly hating their clients, blaming them for their poverty because they "chose" to be poor, all the while believing smugly that they are "helping the wittle baybees" when in reality it is more about keeping themselves secure.

Side note here: do *not* mistake megas with small non-profits because the little ones is where the REAL work is done, they get *nothing* from anyone, and they often operate on a budget for an entire year on an income that would not pay a manager's salary.

So basically, as many of us warned then when Welfare Reform was passed in 1996, they used the the Institution of Poverty to see whether or not this would work and VIOLA! Now these conditions apply to the rest of us. No it was not all Democrats, but let me tell you the key Dems today who were demonizing the poor then, were no different than the Repugs in this endeavor. I was there in the midst of the fight to stop Welfare DEFormed and I was sickened when I saw how my fellow Democrats applauded in unity with Repug hatred. Now they ALL feel smugly entitled to hate you under the blanket of fake "concern", blame you for your poverty, make low wages impossible to live on, use their "mega-non-profits" to hide their money while making sure the paltry "services" they provide will make you feel like a piece of crap, all the while they and their friends are raking in the dough off your backs. Best of all they can stand back while the poor and falling middle class who are the majority, fight among themselves over the tiny sliver of pie that is left over after the rich take the majority of it, believing all the while that the rest of us do not deserve the few crumbs we finally get.

So ain't they SO justified in hating the poor for whom they themselves depend upon for their own comforts?


My 2 cents

Cat in Seattle
Board member of http://www.mamapower.org