Thomas Sowell‘s latest column focuses on politicians’ misuse of language to con taxpayers out of their hard-earned dollars. Among the targets of Sowell’s analysis is the word “poor.”
Perhaps the biggest frauds committed by redefining words are the many fraudulent uses of the word “poor.”
For most of the history of the human race, there was no problem in defining who were “the poor.” They were people without enough to eat, often without adequate clothing to protect them from the elements, and usually people who lived, packed like sardines, in living quarters without adequate ventilation in the summer or adequate heat in the winter, and perhaps also lacking in such things as electricity or adequate sewage disposal.
Today, most of the officially defined “poor” have none of these problems, and most today have amenities such as air conditioning, a car or truck, a microwave oven, and many other things that once defined a middle-class lifestyle. Americans in poverty today have more living space than the average European.
Why are they called “poor” then?
For the same reason that autism, the national debt, and many other things are redefined in completely misleading ways — namely, to justify draining more money from the public in taxes, expanding the government, and allowing politicians to give handouts to people who are expected to vote for their reelection.
If we keep buying it, politicians will keep selling it.
