They Hate Poor People

From P. J. O’Rourke at the Weekly Standard online:

"The liberals’ dirty little secret." 

... elites who denounce poverty despise the poor.

Their every high-minded, right-thinking “poverty program” proves this detestation—from the bulldozing of vibrant tenement communities to the drug law policing policies that send poor kids to prison and rich kids to rehab to the humiliation of food stamps and free school lunches to the loathsome inner-city public schools where those free lunches are slopped onto cafeteria trays.

The federal government has some 50 different “poverty programs.” Nearly half a trillion dollars is spent on them each year.

That’s about $11,000 per man, woman, and child under the poverty line, enough to lift each and every one of them out of poverty. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 poverty guideline for a family of three: $18,530.)

We call them “poverty programs” for a reason. If ordinary people with down-to-earth common sense were spending that half trillion, we’d call them “modest prosperity programs.”

Have progressive elites always hated the poor?

Teddy Roosevelt did some rough riding with them. But once Teddy got all high-minded and right-thinking you didn’t see him hanging around with poor people who weren’t cooking or cleaning for him. William Jennings Bryan was in favor of prohibition, the bastard.  

These days we’ve got Michael Moore. You wouldn’t think he’d hate poor people, having once been one. On the other hand, in dress and deportment, Moore shows every sign of self-loathing. So he’s a hater too.

Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people—except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English.

Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.  

When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he’s saving a parking place. And the elites have never been poor themselves. Although there was that time in graduate school, between research grants, when they had to go without sushi for a week.

Elites are irked at the charity they have to give to the poor. Not that elites, personally, give charity to the poor. They get the IRS to do it for them.

Which is the way elites like it and why they’re in favor of higher taxes. It’s worth the price not to come into any actual contact and risk getting poverty cooties. But elites are human like the rest of us, and paying higher taxes irks them....
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Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/they-hate-poor-people_617428.html