Twelve and a Half Percent

Reports, reports, reports. The recession is over, but it’s a jobless one, with 40 Million people living below the poverty line. Etc.

Funny, since I was a kid, the approximate number of poor people in our country has been 12.5% of the population.

I am a mathy type. So, I think about this and I ask the question, “Have we collectively decided that in order to be the richest country on earth, we need about one out of every eight people to be poor, to remind us to work even harder? Or steal even harder?”

Look---when it comes to money and the allocation of goods, you have to look at it in terms of math---and how you end up with that math. Human nature is at the bottom of it. We are a punitive bunch of beasts. “You’re kind of lazy and stupid? DIE!” “You have emotional problems and you weren’t raised right? DIE!” “You are a low skilled person? DIE!” “You snuck into our country illegally---DIE!”

And though it seems a little over the top and drama-queenish to type DIE! four times, with exclamation points…it is, really, what we are choosing for others. Their death. Because living in a crappy hole of a place (or no place of your own at all) next to an industrial slurry pit, with diseases breaking out all over your body, and no way to take care of it---well, that’s a death sentence. Surely, the poorer you are, the sooner you die. This is a fact.

So, we sentence to death poor people. Is this a natural culling? And if so, then should we not admit it? And if so, should we not also assume that these poor people, if we never help them, should not, naturally, rise up and help themselves? By force, if they must? I know I would.

Or is it a choice? Is it really a choice? Come on.

No baby born on earth asks to be raised next to a mountain of zinc tailings. No little child on earth asks for incest. No teenager asks for abuse and hunger and a lack of decent education. No adult asks for misery. For some people---it’s just the luck of the draw.

Me? I pulled a good card. What the hell do I care?

I do. I don’t know why I care. I mean---I don’t volunteer. I do vote for liberal candidates. I don’t send much money to charity. I do vote for higher taxes and programs for education and wealth redistribution.

Yes. Redistribute it. Why the hell not?
What do you really need?

12.5% That’s a lot of people. 21% is probably enough for a revolution. But 12.5%--- maybe not quite enough---just math. And maybe, 12.5% is the magic number---where you can actually control that many people with a certain size of police and a certain heft of prisons—and things work. And people are fine with it. Somehow, that 12.5% is fine.

I wonder why. Seems like a big number to me.