War on the Poor: Socioeconomic Insignificance in the Nation of Wealth & Success

by Amber Poole

The truth is great and will prevail,
When none care whether it prevail or not.
—Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, Book II of the Alexandria Quartet

Rich people, especially those of the billionaire type, don’t like poor people.

It’s simple. They don’t like the way poor people live, they don’t like the way they look, they don’t like the way they smell. They find them coarse in their mannerisms and vulgar in their language. They are offensive to the sensibilities of a growing neurotic condition sweeping America, called the Billionaire Class. This is a fact. The irony is that they pretend to care about the poor. The elitists are quite dramatic about it, in fact. They create social programs in hopes that these schemes will pacify the unsheltered, those living from paycheck to paycheck, the uneducated, the disenfranchised, and the seniors relying entirely on social security. This pretense stumbles along more or less dependably until there is something like a government shutdown, when suddenly money is withheld from the poor for the most basic need: food.

No, no, no. Not from the rich is such a need withheld…as they will not miss their morning ten-dollar coffee, a Botox treatment, a massage, a hair appointment, a lunch date with their bestie, an evening cocktail, a holiday, or any other indulgence, no matter how frivolous. They indeed earned the right to be in this class, whether by inheritance, hard work, or luck; still, the bigger question is, is it the right thing to do? Is this the kind of world we want? Maybe.

I know there are many, some in my own family, who would disagree with me saying the world has always been like this and it always will be. That may very well be the case. Oddly, it isn’t about how much money one has that disturbs me, as I couldn’t care less how much money the rich class boasts. What destroys me is the politicization and the attitude. If we politicize poverty, we don’t have to feel hungry ourselves. We don’t even have to imagine what it would be like to go without something, as we have more than we need. We can sit comfortably in our gated communities and justify our existence and the unmet needs of the poor by any number of assertions, like laziness, youth, drug use, criminal minds, and immigrant status, to name the main ones. We don’t have to develop compassion except for the retreats we can afford to attend, where we talk about love and humanity and hug trees and drink green tea together with the well-dressed: The Great White Woman Way.

In our societal analysis of the poor, we apply higher values and standards to this class, but do not demand the same from the billionaire class. We accuse the poor of corruption, of manipulating the system to meet their own needs, of lying about any number of things that would favor them in a welfare system; yet, the billionaire class is replete with confirmed cases of pedophilia, cheating the government out of their tax responsibilities, and corporations that exploit their workers. When the poor falsify their application for food stamps or housing assistance for the sake of survival, we accuse them of the same corruption the rich get away with committing without prosecution.

And our criticism is severe. Our message to society seems to support the ideology that if one is rich enough, one can get away with such corruption without being judged. The poor, on the other hand, must live a more principled life, accepting their fate with dignity.

Moreover, we apply outdated models to the acquisition of affordable housing and procurement of steady and reliable employment, expecting a new generation of young people to conform, which is an unfair and unrealistic assumption. What worked for one’s grandfather is no longer the measuring device upon which the youth can set their compass. A college education, for example, used to be within reach of most poor people, but not now.

During an NPR interview in March 2023, Matthew Desmond, responding to the question of who deserves help, answered:

Desmond: Yeah. It gets us into this scarcity mindset, right? And a lot of the ways that the government has designed anti-poverty policies are, frankly, divisive, right? And they've pitted low-income families against moderate-income families, you know? And I think we should reject that scarcity mindset. This isn't the best we can do. We don't have to settle for this. One quick statistic - a recent study showed that if Americans in the top 1% of the income distribution just paid the taxes they owed - not paid more taxes, or, you know, had a higher rate, just paid what they owed, stop evading what they owed, we, as a nation, would raise an additional $175 billion a year. Ok, that's almost enough to lift everyone out of poverty. (Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond)

Unfortunately, money alone will not lift everyone out of poverty. In today’s fast-paced society, our lives and our achievements are based upon and determined by the external success and recognition of others. With such extroverted attitudes, fueled by social media, one hardly has a moment to sit quietly in reflection. Are we humans or are we machines? How do we define self-worth?

How does one play the game of the 1% on an uneven playing field?

I am neither Liberal nor Conservative in my thinking. I am foremost a human being and deeply concerned about what I perceive as a societal shrinkage in compassion toward others. To use the Food Assistance Program in America (SNAP) in a dangerous, governmental game of advancing a personal agenda is beyond my reason. But this appears to be the way we are developing as a collective, toward insensitivity and antipathy.

The subject of poverty is as vast as it is ancient. Adding to this history is now the question of how to navigate advanced technologies, including the obsession with social media and its effect on our mental health, all the while balancing the reality of poverty.

If only the poor would mobilize. I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog post about women coming together as a team, raising their children, working together, studying together to make better lives for themselves and for their children.

What if we stopped feeding the machine?

A steam train couldn’t run without coal. What if we stopped lining the pockets of the 1%? Reduce consumerism. Keep social media to a minimum. Don’t watch TV channels with endless advertisements. It’s not possible to do this alone. We must work together in groups. But to let this kind of system crush us in body, mind, spirit, and soul is something we don’t have to accept without a fight.

The poor. We must stand up and say, NO MORE.

Original Publication Date: 11/08/2025