Problem of Poverty (Letter to the Editor)

Los Angeles Daily News | 06-26-2002 | Joseph Lewis

[boris]

After each election we find our elected political leaders seem to have forgotten prolific promises to end poverty in this country. The U.S. Census confirms more than 41 million people in the United States are living in poverty. We need an epic plan to end poverty in civilization.

Everyone is in agreement that poverty is a scourge on humanity and is one of the major causes of war, crime, and terrorism. Neither prayer nor charity has solved the problem. Poverty is a plague on society. We must elect political leaders who will remember the poor; poverty has no political representation.

--Joseph Lewis, Los Angeles

[boris]

Editor
Daily News

Sir:

Joseph Lewis says we need "an epic program to end poverty"--in the U.S or "in civilization". Which one takes priority is unclear. The epic program he seeks is called free-market capitalism, which has lifted more individuals and nations from poverty than any other force. The evil which creates poverty is socialist government. Third-world nations mired in poverty are almost invariably socialist, and their governments actually employ famine and starvation as weapons against their own citizens.

In this country, we have spent five trillion dollars ($5,000,000,000,000.00) on the "War on Poverty" and other socialist panaceas--forced transfers of wealth from the productive to the non-productive. This has impoverished untold millions in the U.S. Economists will tell Mr. Lewis that subsidizing something creates more of it: we have subsidized poverty for decades and everyone is surprised that we have more of it. Government depends upon poverty to justify ever-larger budgets, bigger bureaucracy, and higher taxes.

And incidentally, it is government which willfully fails to enforce our immigration laws, causing an invasion of uneducated, poor, and disease-ridden illegal immigrants--which tax our schools, criminal, and medical systems to the breaking point. But they are an automatic clientele for the welfare state, and vote reliably Democratic, which is why nothing is done to stop the invasion.

--Boris

[3AngelaD]

Boris, you are a man after my own heart. Not only are we allowing poverty to immigrate at a self-destructive rate, but immigrants' wage competition, a flooding of the labor pool, at the low end of the economic ladder keeps the native poor down, as well. In fact, the native-born poor are the hardest hit and most disadvantage by untrammeled immigration. Strangely enough, their "leaders" can't seem to get their tiny minds around this concept.

[big gray tabby]

Neither prayer nor charity has solved the problem.

I guess this person has come to the realization that, since charity and prayer ain't getting it done, we'd better ship these folks off to "work farms." Or eat them or something.

[anniegetyourgun]

Your letter is fabulous, except that it wasn't written at a 5th grade level. Therefore, the readership won't understand what you are saying.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Dear Mr. Lewis:

Nice of you to write us here at the LA Times.
Please turn to the "employment" section of your newspaper where, typically, 15 pages of jobs of every description are available to anyone.
Look under "can-stackers" for jobs in grocery stores. Dusting and stocking shelves in these stores can pay $15-$20/hour.
Get off your ass.

Sincerely,

the Editors.

[anniegetyourgun]

If only the Church hadn't relinquished her duty to charity to the government. If only the poor prayed.

[Minutes]

You've both got THAT right !

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The churches did not relinquish anything. Their duties were supplanted by government & millions of Sociology graduates since LBJ.

[SouthernFreebird]

You guys sure pay your illegals well....... over here and down south,our whole newspaper ain't 15 pages long and out of the 2 pages of jobs, most require some formal training.

If your lucky enough to get a shelve stocking job you can count on it starting at minium wage. 5 bucks an hour.......not near enough to live on after taxes.... and forget about covering all those pesky things like rent,power,food and so on.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

When we lived in Minneapolis, Cub Foods (Super Value) was always looking for isle clerks. They paid $16/hour plus full benefits. If you knew how to cut meat, the pay was ever better.

[SouthernFreebird]

Good Grief, I don't think our RN's even make that. I can't imagine what the cost of living is there if a stockboy makes that kind of money!!!

[anniegetyourgun]

While you are right about the "great society" nonsense, I see that many churches/denominations have ceded the territory...and their biblical mandate. (Heck, some of them have even decided that it is "wrong" to fulfill the great commission because it is "elitist.")

[Eric in the Ozarks]

'tweren't a cheap place to live.