[lbo-talk] Americans bomb people, save pets

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Oct 7 14:47:42 PDT 2004



> Americans spend gazillions on pets that could be more
> productive spent on feeding the poor. I guess we're
> just heartless fucks.

That assumes that helping the poor is the function of private charity. Pets vs. people is a false dichotomy based on a rather conservative framework assuming a hierarchy of beings. I see nothing wrong in feeding my three cats and giving zero dollars to charity, because I do not believe in charity. Charity is a privatization of public services that should be funded by the government.

A better framing of the issue is that the government is failing to perform its fundamental role of creating conditions that allow all (or most) people to be able to earn decent living. In most cases poor people work and they do not need charity. All they need is living wages and infrastructure (housing, transportation, health care, education) that does not drain their meager earnings.

Cmde Hearfield would like every worker to drive a motor vehicle but he apparently does not realize that a motor vehicle is one of the main contributors to poverty in the US - it is extremely expensive (about $400 a month) unreliable or both. Many people simply cannot afford it, but that cuts them from access to jobs. An easy solution would be a reliable public transit system, but it simply does not exist in most places in this country, because government has other priorities, such as subsidizing suburban development.

Ditto for housing and child care. To get a job, which often requires moving to a new location, requires having money to pay up front to rent a house and find child care. Many people do not have that kind of money. Affordable housing and child care would solve it, but again government have other priorities.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about these problems quite eloquently in "Nickels and Dimes."

To reiterate, putting people on a guilt trip that they buy food for their pets while the poor have no food is plain bullshit to put wool over people's eyes and hide the fact that the people whom they call the government betrayed the public trust and is failing to perform its role.

Wojtek



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