Blame the Beggars

Blame the Beggars

There I sat in a dentist’s chair in Sparks, Nevada, my mouth filled with a rubber block on the left side, an aspirator, water nozzle, mirror and dental drill all in there, and my dentist (let’s call him Tony) starts to tell me a story. I had to apologize later for not holding up my side of the conversation.

Tony said he had been getting gas in Winnemucca at a Chevron station and noticed a family getting out of a minivan in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant next door. There was a father, mother, a young teenage girl and a younger boy. They all put on old, ragged clothing, picked up hand lettered signs and went out to the street to beg. 

He was outraged at the behavior of these folks, and I’m sure I was not the first person to whom he had told this story. 

Tony seemed surprised that such a thing could happen in the USA, but to my mind he seemed oblivious to the fact that this isn’t the USA we all knew thirty or more years ago. Because of the adulation of Wall Street values, and the denigration of ordinary working people, many people are living in a Third World environment right here, right now.

I remember paging through National Geographic magazines as a child, feeling sorry for all those poor people in the less advanced countries, wearing torn and worn clothing, with tattoos covering their bodies, and multiple rings and pins piercing their ears and faces.  I no longer need to look at pictures in a magazine. I guess proving you can accept pain is in vogue now. 

The invisible hand of the free market has worked it’s magic. As a nation we have taken away help for welfare mothers (Clinton), closed factories and shipped millions of jobs to India and China with free trade agreements (Clinton), attacked unions and stifled good wages (Reagan, both Bushes and Obama), removed limits and regulations on banks and lending institutions, enabling usury and predatory business practices (Clinton and both Bushes), dispossessed millions of homeowners through foreclosure and eviction (Bush 2 and Obama), worked at eliminating defined benefit pensions by replacing them with 401Ks, and then robbing them blind in the crash of 2008 (Bush 2).

Speaking of the crash of 2008, both Republicans and Democrats colluded in rushing billions of dollars to save totally corrupt and criminal organizations (banks) from going under. Those same institutions are now back at it, stealing from working people in every nefarious way they can devise. There is no prison time for robbing poor people.

How is it that people who have spent their lives hammering nails, turning bolts, twisting screwdrivers and literally making, building, creating things have become the “takers”--the infamous forty seven percent? And the parasites who sit there talking people out of their money on the phone, gambling that money in risky schemes in the money markets, swindling poor people out of their pitiful life savings - they are the “makers?” Where is the outrage?

Our government stands on the sidelines, observing the decline of civilization, if not assisting in its destruction. Thirty years of Reaganomics - ”Government is not the solution to our problems, government IS the problem!” - have worked their devastating toll. And yet the blind ideology of Ayn Rand still has its adherents. “Cutting taxes and reducing the size of government has worked so well these last thirty years, let’s do it some more!”    

We have one political party openly and actively advocating the reduction or repeal of Social Security and Medicare. President Obama has offered to help them do it in order to get a “grand bargain.” Sure, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let’s impoverish old people! They aren’t poor enough yet!

Some people who can’t afford medical care anymore are hoping that the new “Obamacare” plan works out, even though the other party has been trying to find a way to repeal it and deny them affordable medical care just as before. Who would have believed a political party could campaign on keeping poor people sick and unable to see a doctor?

We can expect to see more beggars, not fewer, in the future. Our educational system is being swiftly dismantled, axed into two systems, one private system for the rich, and one substandard public system for the rest of us beggars. College is becoming out of reach for all but the most wealthy. 

When those millions of uneducated people go out to look for a job they will find few jobs that pay a living wage to unskilled labor. The minimum wage is unlivable - not even covering the rent of a cheap shack to live in, let alone food for the kids. Twenty two veterans a day kill themselves because there are no jobs and no help for the next two years from the underfunded and understaffed VA.

Begging is not easy. You must rip away your pride and stand out in the weather asking people to donate. Some, in an attempt to give back something, squeegee your windshield or offer God’s blessing on you. In some places (as far as I know not here yet) children have hands chopped off or eyes put out to elicit more sympathy and more money given.

But if begging brings in more money than a job (which you couldn’t find anyway) then the market rules. You do what you can to best feed and clothe your wife and children. Or yourself.

I remember the past, when government was big enough to take care of its people in a civilized way. I can see the future, when government finally gets drowned in the bathtub, and all hope fades for civilization.

It will not be Utopia. It will be Somalia.

Don Rogers

Sept. 4, 2013