Left Out of the Conversation

Trey Smith

In the present political circus it seems that liberals mostly want to tweak the status quo to get better deals (cheaper, less polluting energy, safer water, air & food, universal medical care & education) for themselves and their immediate neighbors. They also want to stop global warming and raise taxes on the rich.

Conservatives seem to want the private sector to manage the economy, control education, health care and prisons; they also want control of women’s bodies, voter registration laws to limit voting by poor people, lower taxes for the rich, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act for everyone else. And they expect Ivy League schools for their children, student loans at high interest for the middle classes, and minimal training for poor kids to be obedient workers and consumers or professional killers in the armed forces.

But I see hardly any political commitment on either side to the world’s poor and illiterate, to the billions of humans whose lives are blighted by wars, energy extraction, trade policies and economic myths, to the unemployed and homeless of our own communities, to the "illegal aliens" who cross political borders in search of better lives, or to refugees fleeing floods, droughts or famines.
~ from No Room for the Poor in Conservative VS Liberal Interchange by Caroline Arnold ~

If you watch and listen to the various candidates running for President (as well as those running for Congress), they always seem to be talking about the middle class and, sometimes, the upper class. You rarely hear ANY mention at all about the plight of the working poor. It seems that both corporate parties embrace the concept of trickle down economics -- take care of the middle class and a few crumbs will fall out of the basket for the working poor to suck on.

I didn't say CHEW on because those meager crumbs rarely seem large enough to provide much sustenance. The problem is becoming ever more untenable as those few crumbs are now being fought over by increasing number of people!

We should all know why the poor don't merit a place in the conversation: in politics, money talks and the poor lack money.

Sadly, it really is as simple as that.