I would add, jjj, that removing 'hope' is part of that program. If people think that they can get out on their own they will be much more 'leave me alone!' and 'stop joggling my elbow'. 'Hope' is important, hence it is important that it be removed.

Jan, seeks a point for use of present subjunctive

It's too bad my follow-up was not included as it agrees with many of your points. I agree that life is what you make of it. Part of public education should be to point out potential to the "under privileged" and show them how to get there instead of celebrating a culture of victimhood.

I totally agree that there are wealthy folks who want socialism, just as there are poor folks who like capitalism. Also, I never said that my little anecdotal musings were science. Take it for what it is; just a quick little (probably flawed) unscientific observation.

As well the secular and intellectual. Authoritarianism is characterized my misconstruction, ulterior motives and ultimately opportunistic advantage. The antithesis of the "Golden Rule". There is no standard of personality for susceptibility to stupid. It's a matter of character.

Well put, johnpe1.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken

Now, with the incorporation of Cloward and Piven into political strategy, the seekers of power have the means of engineering society to their benefit and the "poor" be damned.

Plenty of wealthy people are willing to give up their rights for short term gains (see Donald Trump, GM, the investment banking community on Wall Street). This is nonsense parading as science.

I think delivery on the promises of "being taken care of" should be exposed to the light of day. Can you imagine as a private person today taking in a slave with no rights in exchange for "taking care of him/her"? What kind of care are they really going to get? And what are the slaves going to do for you in exchange. And in our system, what kind of care is really delivered to these people? Not very good care actually.

I think poor people are not street smart at all when they actually think that some overlord will just take care of them out of the goodness of his heart. Thats just NOT human nature.

Apparently you havent been to an emergency room lately. I think the idea that all ER's must treat patients has destroyed the ER for the people who can afford them. It takes multiple hours to be even seen, while you sit in pain wondering if you are going to die. If you get admitted to the hospital, its like being moved from hell to heaven (at least here in vegas). Its so dramatic that one wonders how the standard of care can be so different in the SAME building.

I have concluded its the idea that care must be provided to anyone by any ER that opens its doors, and the fact that a lot of them have no money. This starves the ERs of cash to operate, so they resort to having minimal staff and facilities . Its a very bad situation. There should be private ERs that take only people who can afford the care- maybe on some sort of membership basis.

Years of public education, has led to graduates who not only have no idea how to reason, but feel afraid if choices are presented to them. Personal responsibility is absent from these people. Even parents have become convinced they do NOT know what is best for their kids, because moron teachres have told them so. It is not poverty, but poverty which causes it, can result. Some, faced with life's realities, find life too hard, and look for that cozy nanny state dsytopia to take care of them.They never realize that they are expendable when the state runs out of other people's money.

This is a tired old chestnut that's been around as long as there's been 'moochers', altruist, and the Catholic Church, with their invention of the 'Golden Rule'. It's pathetic that otherwise reasoning people still fall for it and continue to promote such simple bromides meant to provide some type of dignity or nobility to the 'very humble and economically challenged folks' on the other side of the tracks and stir empathy based on it could have been me, and 'if only' thoughts. They're only naive, simple people by circumstance and subject to all kinds of manipulation by the elite, they try to tell you.

To think this way is to deny the reality of true destitution and those that through their own efforts, struggles, and use of their minds climb out of the "lower class", and those that place more value on self reliance, individualism, and liberty than the 'comforts' of paternalism. It as well denies the facts of 'moocher' statists. Such individuals are only low on "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" by volition and living for today and to a large portion, mental defect.

It's not "dictocratic communism" that draws them nor a conspiracy by political parties to create them--it's immaturity, a total inability to grasp cause and effect, and a biological defect of failure of the anterior prefrontal cortex to fully develop that results in the lack of normal ability to grasp the benefits of delayed gratification. It's true enough that politics has learned how to influence such people, but they exist in the first place because we let them steal and beg from us. It may well be that we suffer from a larger mental defect of 'empathy' and politics has learned how to influence that defect to arrive at altruism.

in other words, "poverty" depends on how spoiled we are. -- j
.

I wonder if it's more complicated than that because the Founder's of the US were materially poorer than most people today, but were still concerned about freedom. I wonder if the problem is infrastructure built around a certain level of wealth. Maybe an example would we be a city designed around cars would make not having a car difficult. This would not be an issue before cars were invented.