Understanding of poverty still Dark Age obtuse

I just read the John Kostrzewa article on a non-profit organization's latest report on poverty here. Community Action Partnership of Providence reports "poverty remains stubbornly and unacceptably high". This is consistent with the Providence Journal series "Middle Class Squeeze". Reading even the most honest and conscientious reports on poverty ( I still recall Michael Harrington's "Poverty in America") I often think the dreary subject is both over-studied and poorly understood.

I am presently reading "Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel DeFoe. The horror in London in 1665 was not even poorly understood. This was before the Age of Science initiated by Galileo.

Galileo gave us the gift of the scientific method. Even simple everyday motion was not understood-not even by the genius of Plato and Aristotle, whose wisdom guided the early Doctors of the Church, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Galileo conducted simple motion experiments using an inclined plane and a primitive timer. He freed motion from the necessity of a mysterious force. As a simple deduction: the Earth in its orbit around the Sun did not need invisible angels pushing it.


Today we are equally stupefied by social phenomena like poverty, homelessness, unemployment, periodic recessions and depressions. We have well meaning organizations that are dedicated to reducing poverty–while still accepting ruling class mystification of it. If we truly want to end poverty we must first have a rational understanding of wealth creation, THE FORCE of the divine JOB CREATORS !

Real wealth consists of real THINGS. Money is only wealth in its most abstract, socialized form. In the last century science has reduced all things to forms of mass-energy- to matter in motion. Rich or poor we expect to rewarded with pay for our EFFORT on the job. But science has only one objective measure of EFFORT - mental or physical :the consumption of calories. Clearly our one percent plutocracy -which owns just about every THING- cannot possibly make a greater effort than the rest of the human race.

It is private ownership of the means of production - and control of all other forms of PRIVATE PROPERTY- that allows the ruling class to amass more and more wealth at the expense of the truly hard working middle-working class. So when apologists for capitalism talk unctuously about "hard earned wealth", you do not have to be a flaming Marxist to laugh at them.

Nor is there any magic in money as a THING IN ITSELF.  A gold brick left in a closed bank's vault for a hundred years will remain just one gold brick when the vault is opened. Meanwhile paper stock certificates at first worth one thousand dollars may easily- by the SOCIAL process of "free market" capitalism - may now be worth one million dollars. What is the essence of this miracle? As Marx pointed out more than a century and a half ago, LIVING LABOR exploited by capital literally WORKS this miracle of wealth creation.

So let us not bow down stupidly today before the so-called JOB CREATORS. They will never liberate the human race from abject poverty. They continue to preach to us their own Gospel of Wealth: the solution to ALL the problems of capitalism is more capitalism and of course : GET THE GOVERNMENT OFF OUR BACKS!

Yet without some government oversight, I would not trust a dedicated money maker to make my donuts. And just consider all the MAKE A BUCK swindles out there - beyond everyday workplace exploitation.

Listening to reactionary Red Eye radio early in the morning,  I am convinced that a great deal of  blowhard TALK RADIO is so much rationalization for Robber Baron greed: We should be ashamed of ourselves for questioning the wealth of the wealthy- for questioning its very legitimacy? This is truly sinful envy and jealousy of THE BLESSED SUCCESSFUL.