While I was away, Nathan Johnson published a really good essay asking who's to blame for poverty. Johnson doesn't want to get personal; he wants to focus attention on the role of "educational opportunity, low wages and lack of a well-planned safety net" in poverty. He says that blaming all poor people for their poverty constitutes "a poverty of ideas... and... a poverty of the soul":
It is a refusal to recognize that we live in an economic system that is a game of chance. Increasingly, the family to which you were born will determine the economic outcome of your life. If you want to improve your chances of living the "American Dream" and climbing the economic ladder, studies have demonstrated you have a better chance of accomplishing it in Europe, where there are economic safety nets and more equal educational opportunities.
As much as we would like to believe that hard work, talent or a combination of the two will lead to a steady, livable income, that is not reality. Sometimes, the system and chance conspire to spit people out at random and send them spiraling to a place that they, too, never thought they would go [Nathan Johnson, "Poverty: Who Is to Blame?" An Inland Voyage, 2012.07.19].
One week later, Johnson receives a four-word response from a reader, in a note stapled to a copy of the print version of his column printed in the Yankton Press & Dakotan. Those four words, in shaky capital letters: "CHILDISH UNAMERICAN LYING BULL[...]."
I guess I don't see what's childish about suggesting that spending less time assigning blame and more time looking for solutions. I don't see what's un-American about wanting to protect our fellow Americans from the vagaries of an inhuman economy that can cast anyone into poverty. I don't see what's lying about acknowledging the fact that Europe and Canada offer citizens better prospects for upward mobility than the United States.
Johnson doesn't spend time rebutting; he just wishes that his correspondent would do him the courtesy of writing a complete sentence. I just wish that his correspondent could build his argument on something more substantial than our favorite Anglo-Saxon curse word.
I can't say for sure, but I have the feeling the scribbler criticizing Johnson's argument did not include his name. I have an even stronger feeling that the scribbler would not say those same words to Johnson's face over coffee in a public place.
For what it's worth, that's one reason I ask for names in my comment section. I don't mind hard words and hard debate. But I want to know the words you are saying are words you would associate with your name. I want to know that if you leave a particularly stern comment here and then I see you at the grocery store or the park, you'll acknowledge that you said it and you meant it... just as I will acknowledge that I say and mean every word I publish here.
What the analysis does not show is the amount of wealth that is transfered from America to the European plutocrats (via the Federal Reserve, World Bank, IMF, and BIS) that provides the so-called European safety nets. This is what we call "The Global Economy".
So instead of BS, it is BIS (Bank of International Settlement)
The Senate should blend Ron Paul's edit the fed bill with his cannabis bill. Call it: Smoke up the Fed Act.