They threw a blog action day today and no one invited me!

So, I’ll take it upon myself to post about this year’s topic: poverty.

I actually have a solution to end poverty in the United States. If you like it, you can send me some money (that’ll help by ending my poverty).

If you’re poor in the United States, you can become better off by:

1. Sell one or two of your TV sets, and don’t buy any more until you can afford them.
2. Sell one of your cars. Again, don’t buy one if you can’t afford it.
3. Stop smoking.
4. Stop drinking.
5. Stop doing illegal drugs.
6. Stop having kids (and if you do get pregnant, there are adoption agencies who can place your unwanted child with folks who do want it).
7. Stop voting for Democrats. Their Robin Hood promises will only serve to further weaken the economic foundation of this country, and when that goes away, we’ll all be poor.

As you can probably tell by now, it’s my feeling that we’ve defined poverty too far up in this country. Poverty in the United States is nothing compared to the abject poverty in some other countries. Folks here who are poor generally have a couple of TV’s, air conditioning, a house, and food. Poverty to them means not being able to get the latest Play Station game when it comes out.

All this is not to say that there aren’t people in the United States who are really in poverty. In the part of East Tennessee where I was raised, there are still folks who have outhouses and to have to hand pump their water into a bucket to take into the house. TV to those folks is a luxury they know they can’t afford.

The best way to help poor folks is to make sure that there’s a safety net. And you have to protect the integrity of that safety net by making sure that folks don’t turn it into a hammock. The safety net should be temporary so that folks have an incentive to help themselves.

Speaking of incentives, we need to remove the barriers that slow or prevent folks from starting their own businesses. If I have a great idea and take the risk of going into business to sell it, and that business grows and grows and grows to the point that I have to hire people, government shouldn’t punish me by taxing me to death. I can help a LOT more people directly by hiring them to do honest work than I can help if government takes it away from me to redistribute as it sees fit.

I daresay that the Blog Action Day folks are getting a little more than they bargained for with my post, but I think it’s important to realize that some of these organizations whose purpose is to fight poverty have a vested interest in that same poverty. Think about it: if poverty suddenly goes away, their source for money goes way.

If you really feel like you need to donate some money somewhere, then give it to the Salvation Army. I think they’re in a better position to actually help people who are truly in need than a lot of these other outfits (including the “official” Blog Action Day charity).