You're Not Broke Because "You're Lazy," You're Broke Because You're Exploited

In my latest edition of “letters from Captain Obvious,” I’d like to address another foundational lie of the United States.It seems like every time I turn around, I have to listen to some other jerk scream, “poor people are lazy.”My cousin’s wife, who I’ve since blocked on social media, used to alternate her poverty shaming memes with her memes about being a devout Christian. I wrote her and said, “It’s not Christlike to poverty shame now is it?”She responded by telling me that’s not what she was doing, she was just mad about “people on welfare driving around in brand new SUVs.”Sigh…What we’re looking at here is the effect of 31+ trillion dollars worth of exploitation propaganda. More and more I’m starting to believe that if we’re going to bring about any change in our society, we have to stop worrying about complex issues and just get back to basics.Here’s a truth bomb for you: People aren’t poor because they don’t work. Everybody works. People are poor because they AREN’T PAID! That’s how you get poverty. This idea of equating work with wealth has no basis in reality.Sponsor me for $5 a month ❤️ Sponsor me for $4 a month 🧡 Sponsor me for $3 a month 💛 Sponsor me for $2 a month 💚 Thank you! 💙Wealth is not a consequence of workEverything in the United States is built on a lie. The idea that this is the land of opportunity is a lie. The simple fact is that if you don’t belong to the right social group, you aren’t getting any opportunities.It’s the oldest trick in the book to tell people that if they work, good things will happen at a later date. “Work will set you free” was the motto of the concentration camps. In some parts of the country, teachers aren’t allowed to discuss that history anymore. I guess the government is afraid you might connect the dots and figure out what’s happening.That’s terrifying.Americans need to stop thinking of oppressive societies as “something that happens elsewhere.” We’re living in one.The things schools should be teaching is that all wealth is a product of labor. One person can only do so much labor. Therefore the only way to accumulate an obscene amount of wealth is to steal the labor of others.That’s it.That’s the only way to create rich people.Shifting the viewpointThe idea that poor people “don’t work” is a fabrication. It’s a hypothesis that’s not based on evidence. It’s a form of value judgment. It’s a shame because it’s exactly the thing that Christ tells everyone not to do.Judge not, that ye be not judged — Matthew 7:1What that means is DON’T judge. That’s really the only line from The Bible that you need to memorize. Every time somebody comes at you babbling about sin, remind them that they’re not supposed to judge according to Christ.Somebody tell me why the heck we can’t make any headway with this idea? The Bible clearly says you’re not supposed to judge anybody!When triggered racism apologists go around saying that “true history will make white kids feel bad about themselves,” why doesn’t anyone respond, “Oh, you mean like any accusation of sin?”The whole concept of calling people “sinners” is designed to make people feel bad about themselves!The whole concept of saying people are poor because they’re “lazy” is also designed to make people feel bad about themselves!Our whole society is built on making people feel bad about themselves. The only people whose feelings we protect are the exploiters!Why are all of these other arguments always lost in the tidal wave of crushing judgment?Sponsor me for $5 a month ❤️ Sponsor me for $4 a month 🧡 Sponsor me for $3 a month 💛 Sponsor me for $2 a month 💚 Thank you! 💙Anyone who assumes they know why people are poor is evilOkay, let me give you a hypothetical situation. Let’s say I was walking by a river and I heard the noise of mewing. I look out and I see a bag caught on a snag with a bunch of kittens somebody has left to drown.Perhaps I might think, “Well, obviously those are kittens that attacked a baby and they therefore deserve to die.” Or maybe I might think, “Obviously those kittens are lazy and refused to work, so they deserve what they get.”Or, you know, maybe rational thinking will prevail and I’ll acknowledge I DON’T KNOW why those kittens are there, and I shouldn’t default to being an ENABLER of ANIMAL TORTURE!Ya think?But we must ask ourselves this question, if we can agree with the logic at work in the above scenario, why do we submit to becoming enablers of HUMAN torture every time we passively allow individuals to make offensive statements like, “poor people are lazy”?Anyone who fails to object to that statement is worse than the person who fails to save the kittens.Passive funnels of wealth theftYou don’t think about this because it’s not happening to you, but there are people who know that death is inevitable and they’ve figured out the best way to profit from it.I’m old enough where I’ve started to see signs of my strength ebbing, and it scares the hell out of me. I used to think, “Well at least I’ll go down with a fight. Maybe I’ll take a few of them with me.” But today I realize there will be no fight. They’re just going to hold me down and take everything from me and I’ll be powerless to resist.The oppressors know that you’ll become weak. They know that you’ll become vulnerable, and they have set up a whole sequence of wealth funnels to make sure everything you’ve worked for in life won’t go to your kids, but will instead be diverted to the accounts of those people who own private pedophile islands where they invite their rich and powerful friends.Everybody is so worried about the aggressive forms of theft, that they overlook the passive ones. This isn’t an example of somebody holding you up in an alley. Nope! People object to that.However, people don’t bother to object to:* Fabricating gaps in healthcare coverage from switching jobs (so you’re unprotected for a month every couple of years)* Allowing the healthcare industry to set any price they want (basically the maximum amount you’re able to pay)* Allowing nefarious groups to take advantage of elderly people who suffer from dementia (elder abuse is a thing)You see? People don’t find these things objectionable so they’re allowed to remain in place. Maybe you’ll go through a lapse in healthcare coverage and be totally fine. The industry doesn’t care. They know they’ll get you on the next go round.That’s how this works. You slip through and you think, “no big deal, no need to change that.” So it remains in place and it gets other people, and little by little all the money is funneled away to a small class of exploitative jerks.Think about it! Look around. Look at all the people who have held wonderful jobs for decades. Why isn’t everybody handing down a couple of million dollars to their kids? The answer is because that money has been stolen!Sponsor me for $5 a month ❤️ Sponsor me for $4 a month 🧡 Sponsor me for $3 a month 💛 Sponsor me for $2 a month 💚 Thank you! 💙You’re not allowed to die with dignity in the United StatesWhat do you think happened to enslaved human beings who grew too infirm to work during the era of American authoritarian fascism and genocide (our history books refer to that time with the sanitized name of “the plantation era”…and we have to change that).In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass describes a moment where an American Southern fascist murders a black man in cold blood (Chapter IV, p 19–20). In fact, the only thing stopping American fascists of that era from murdering people was the fact that those people still had value as laborers.Enslaved people were wealth creators. That’s what we should call them instead of “slaves.”Even so, American fascist oppressors didn’t hesitate to murder able bodied human beings as the slave narratives prove. Therefore, we can only assume they must have inflicted horrible abuses upon the elderly.That tradition is alive and well to this day. It rears its ugly head every time somebody says, “you’re poor because you are too lazy to work.” That’s a justification for stripping an elderly person of dignity who has been so beaten down by the years of sacrifice already put in that s/he no longer has the strength to carry on.Meanwhile, the fruits of all those years of hard labor are jingling in the pocket of some rich jerk who spends all his leisure time going on television to point at the rest of us and lecture us all about how little we’ve achieved.None of this represents justice.None of this represents decency.Quit assuming anything is fairEverybody walks around with their head in a cloud thinking that the prices assigned to goods and services are somehow connected to reality.The truth is that there is a whole population of entitled jerks out there who spend all their time laughing at the rest of us. When you or I run up a debt of $10 or $1,000 or $5,000, we know there’s no power on heaven or earth that we can appeal to in order to get off the hook.But there’s another class that routinely runs up debts of $50,000 or $5,000,000 or $500,000,000, and all they have to do is send off an email from their cell phone at the beach and it disappears into thin air.That’s the reality of the world.Chances are if you borrow $10, you’ll have to pay it back. But if you borrow $10,000,000 you can get away with it somehow. It’s mind boggling to believe, but there’s evidence that it’s true. All these rich jerks know how to go bankrupt so they get to maintain their lifestyles, but somebody has to pay for that.That’s the reason wages remain low.That’s the reason entitled politicians call the working class “lazy.”You see, poor people are always on the hook to supply the labor to make up for the mismanagement of the rich.Always.This starts with friends, acquaintances, politicians and the media who are free to poverty shameThe next time somebody makes a passive value judgment about the work ethic of poor people, don’t you dare sit there and let it pass uncontested. When people say things like that, it’s your duty to become frothing at the mouth angry.In the end, the money is coming out of your pocket. Blaming poor people is just part of a mechanism designed to make YOU pay for it when the rich fail.So speak now if you want your kids to benefit from the work you do in your fleeting time of strength. We deserve to benefit from our labors.We deserve to be paid.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe