Overturning of Prop. 13 sought in lawsuit (California)

[Ken Burch]

174. Nothing I was talking about equals anybody taking anything from you "by force of arms".

It's not like having your taxes go to supporting efforts to fight poverty is equivalent to either being mugged OR being overthrown in a revolution.

Here's what I'd do to change the approach to poverty:

I'd switch from handing out benefit checks to actually creating real jobs programs, with real skill training included, in impoverished areas, to those physically able to work, virtually all of whom want to work(and, since most of that poverty was caused by the government-ordered "redlining" policies on credit and insurance that started in the late 1930's, it should be government that funds those programs, under the control of the poor rather than of bureaucrats, to make up for that)and I'd impose a massive reduction in university tuition rates so that higher education, without which nobody can rise out of poverty these days, is actually available to all, rather being nothing but a system of white-collar trade schools for the 1%.

What do you say about those ideas?

Are you willing to admit that most poor people WANT to work and don't need to be goaded into trying to help themselves?

You are revealing a lot of very ugly things about your views of the human race in this series of posts. Perhaps you're not a 1%, but you are thinking like one, which, if you aren't among that crowd makes no sense, since no one who isn't megarich now is going to become megarich later. Only those born with wealth die with it nowadays.

If you say you aren't racist, I'll accept that...but you damn sure are classist. You simply assume that those who have less than you have brought their misery on themselves. And even though you've complained(at times rightly)that I've been judgmental towards you, you simply assume that you are entitled to judge the poor-even though you live your life in cocooned suburban comfort.

You need to accept that you're just another member of the human race. And you need to accept that subjecting the poor to paternalism and morals lectures is totally inappropriate. Almost nobody is poor due to laziness or lack of character. And unless you've somehow managed to meet every poor person in California, you're not entitled to say otherwise, because if you don't know them, you're just guessing about them.

And charitable contributions don't help the poor at all (I mention this since you bragged about your support of charity in another post), because charity doesn't change the conditions the poor live in.