Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 3:38 PM
If you listen to any campaign, anywhere in the world these days, politicians usually make big promises to the middle class, and promise big tax cuts and incentives for the rich! Meanwhile, the poor, whom both sides depend on to put them over the top, are totally overlooked, both during the campaigns and by the government that is voted in! They are given no incentive to vote, and yet they do, in large numbers. Wat a ting!
You have to go to dictatorships and socialism to find some sympathy for the poor! But even then, the poor have to accept what is passed down to them, and don’t have a voice on how the economy should benefit them. The poor are always on the losing side of every argument; they have no power, or at least they are made to believe that they don’t. So, they continue existing in a world that doesn’t see them, or that looks down on them as lazy, as parasites, as less than!
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Sri Lanka had been devolving into an economic disaster for the last 15 years or so, until poor people had enough. They rose up, and with the help of university students and a disenchanted middle class, got rid of a corrupt government, which couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything to relieve their pain! It was the power of the people, mainly the poor, that brought changes, hopefully positive ones, to a people drowning in poverty! They elected a far left socialist as their new leader. We will have to wait and see how he will help his country’s poor lift themselves out of that vicious cycle! In my opinion, anything would be better than the government they just threw out.
Back in the day when I was campaigning with Dean Lindo, people would ask for wahn lee 5 dallas, or for food, or a pair of shoes in order for him to earn their votes. They didn’t ask for better streets or schools or hospitals; their requests were more immediate, fighting for survival. I don’t know what the cost is today to get someone’s vote, but it has to be more than 5 dollars or a tin of milk!
As this campaign in the United States is reaching its zenith, neither candidate mentions poor people, although Kamala’s message and policies are more geared towards lifting poor people out of poverty and into the middle class. Poor people are the unmentionables; they are the unseen, unrepresented, misunderstood, marginalized segments of every society! They are homeless, taken advantage of by not being properly compensated for the labor they provide. The forgotten lot, the invisible ones!
So, when crime becomes rampant in a society, when homelessness and hunger and disease start eating away at the foundations of any society, the poor are blamed for their state! There is little or no sympathy or understanding, from the rest of us. They are over-policed and underrepresented; they’re treated as lepers, mostly through no fault of their own.
Maybe one day, when events cause us to really see chronic poverty for what it truly is, we will have more empathy for the plight of the less fortunate. Maybe politicians and businesses will see the value of every citizen, and see even the poorest among us, not as the wretched of the earth, but as contributors to the wellbeing and prosperity of a nation! Wat a ting, indeed!
Glen