[sparklite2]

. One-in-five Californians live in poverty
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No matter how much income equality there may be, there will always be a bottom fifth of society.  Always.  So we (THEY) move up the asset-held level to whatever that bottom fifth's assets happen to be, creating a new 'poverty line,' which doesn't ease poverty but merely redefines it.

The only way to eliminate poverty is what communism advocates, but does not attain, by keeping everyone at the same asset level.  The problem with that is it destroys the incentive to perform, and the free-riders will dominate until no one has anything. That's just human nature.

Rather than deny human nature,  Marxists opt to change the nature of humans, achieving Utopia.  That's where Soviet Man comes in.  He's had his hard drive reformatted and loaded with Utopian software.  Except the Soviets had sixty years of indoctrination without achieving Soviet Man.

They would have been better advised to use a little ju-jitsu and use man's desire to get stuff  (Greed is Good or at least can be harnessed.) to let him make money and take a little of it for governance.  But of course, that is capitalism, which didn't fit Marx's narrative.  Why we teach his idiocy in college illustrates the desire for Utopia by those to whom history is a blank slate and their ever-recycled conceit, "This time it's different

[CharlesMartelsGhost]

The Left remains enamored with socialism/communism.

It’s like that because they each picture themselves becoming one of the big shots with the nice dacha, but none of them imagines they’ll end up a corpse in a mass grave.