How To Be Poor

Extreme poverty is not a difficult condition to reach. All you have to do is remove yourself to a desolate wilderness area, and exert the minimum effort necessary to feed and shelter yourself. Any increase in activity, or human interaction, will make you less poor.
It’s more difficult to become poor if you start off with the advantages of modern technology, surrounded by the incredible human resources of a capitalist republic. Here are some techniques that both individuals, and nations, find equally reliable for impoverishing themselves:
Spend more than you earn. Nothing gets you to the poor house faster than spending money with wild abandon, especially when you borrow large sums, and pay exorbitant interest rates. The national debt of the United States approaches $13 trillion, and it’s growing by four billion dollars per day. Babies born today will begin their lives with $42,000 in debt clamped around their wrists and ankles. We paid over $383 billion in interest on the national debt last year. Anyone who has allowed a huge portion of their income to drain away into interest payments on credit card debt can testify how effectively it greases the slide into poverty.
Be as inflexible as possible. Long-term commitments locking in high levels of spending will greatly reduce your ability to exploit new opportunities, and deal with setbacks. Someone who dedicates most of their income to monthly cable service, cell phones, club memberships, and car payments is poorly equipped to investigate new business opportunities. A financial emergency can wipe out their meager savings and push them into ruin.
The same principle applies at the national level. Huge amounts of untouchable entitlement spending fuel our national debt, and leave us with limited resources for coping with war and disaster. Our massive government has already begun to eat into the muscle and bone of the economy, reducing the flexibility of private corporations through taxes and regulations. Nationalized industries become calcified in layers of bureaucracy, political ambition, and the need to satisfy powerful constituencies. Efficiency and flexibility are far down the list of priorities. Government is far slower to adapt to changing conditions than free markets, leaving poorly-invested national resources to rot away.
Lose control of your finances. People who don’t pay attention to their bank accounts and balance sheets are always surprised to discover they’re bankrupt. If you’re already broke, it really stings when a $20 check for pizza bounces, costing you $50 in fees. The tumble into poverty often begins when a spendthrift relative or spouse is given access to a formerly solvent bank account.
The American taxpayer is suffering through a shotgun wedding to an irresponsible government. We have very little idea of what happens to the money vacuumed from our paychecks by Washington. The federal government could never pass the kind of audit it routinely demands from businesses. Billions of dollars from the Obama “stimulus” simply vanished into thin air.
No one can possibly comprehend the entirety of federal spending bills or tax law, and our congressional representatives don’t even try. Massive bills like ObamaCare sprawl across the American economy, groaning and popping out poisonous little “Easter eggs” every few days. The percentage of the government’s tax and spending machinery which lies completely beyond the understanding or control of its citizens is growing at a rapid pace.
Try not to cooperate with others. Human interaction produces wealth: the exchange of goods and services, from which both parties gain. Almost every job is easier if you have help. Operations become more productive when labor can be specialized, leaving each worker to concentrate on using his talents and expertise.
An individual can become poor by minimizing his contact with others. Removing the benefits of exchange and cooperation goes a long way toward destroying wealth. A nation achieves the same effect by replacing free markets with government control, building barriers to exchange and cooperation. When the State separates producers and consumers, using hearty blows from its ham fists, it keeps resources from finding demand. A notable effect of this is high unemployment, which greatly assists our national quest for poverty.
Convince yourself improvement is impossible. Poverty requires a certain lack of initiative. The best way to remain unemployed is to stop looking for a job, because you’re certain none can be found. Despair flourishes after the careful elimination of hope. Some poor souls look at the ruins of a dissolute life, decide they don’t know where to start fixing it… and therefore never get started. If success is the refusal to be beaten, failure is the refusal to pursue success.
A nation becomes poor by making unsustainable commitments, then telling itself they can never be reformed. A confession of national helplessness transforms a recession into a depression. Big Government grows like a tumor, after convincing the public there is no way to reverse its growth. Every government program is indestructible, pushed on a populace with the assurances there are no practical or moral alternatives. We’re told we can never improve the situation – there are too many entrenched dependencies, stupid voters, powerful politicians, and unbreakable laws in our way. All opposition to the statist agenda is illegitimate, based in racism or greed.
To complete our journey into national poverty, it’s essential to give another Congress, and presidential term, to those who tell us we’re not capable of managing our business affairs, speech, and personal health. We must accept the proposition that freedom is such a failure that even thinking about it is sinful. There are no possible solutions to our problems, beyond those officially approved by the great minds in Washington, who are only interested in policing only one border: the limits of their imagination.
Obedience is the perfect ingredient to complete the recipe of poverty, after risk and innovation have been filtered out. History has shown us many wonders, but there has never been such a thing as a wealthy slave. If we surrender another decade to politicians who spend delusional amounts of imaginary money, demand rigid control of our markets, and replace voluntary cooperation for mutual advantage with compulsory obedience to the State, America can finally become poor.

Posted by Doctor Zero on May 13, 2010