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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 06:57 AM Dec 2014

The 6-Step Process to Dispose of the Poor Half of America

http://www.alternet.org/economy/6-step-process-dispose-poor-half-america



1. Deplete Their Wealth

Recent analysis has determined that half of America is in or near poverty. This is confirmed by researchers Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who point out: "The bottom half of the distribution always owns close to zero wealth on net. Hence, the bottom 90% wealth share is the same as the share of wealth owned by top 50-90% families - what can be described as the middle class."

2. Strip Away Their Income

Earnings due to workers for their years of productivity have been withheld by people in power. Based on inflation, the minimum wage should be nearly three times its current level. An investor report from J.P. Morgan noted a direct correlation between record profits and cutbacks in wages.


3. Take Away Their Homes

A study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition concluded that an average American renter would need to earn $18.92 per hour -- well over twice the minimum wage -- to afford a two-bedroom apartment. "In no state," their report says, "can a full-time minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent." Over one-eighth of the nation’s supply of low income housing has been permanently lost since 2001.

4. Hit Them with Fines, Fees, and Fleecings

The poor half of America is victimized by the banking industry, which takes an average of $2,412 each year from underserved households for interest and fees on alternative financial services; by rental centers that charge effective annual interest rates over 100 percent; by payday lenders whocharge effective annual interest rates of over 1,000 percent; and by the burgeoning prison industry, which charges prisoners for food and health care and phone calls and probation monitoring and anything else they can think of.
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The 6-Step Process to Dispose of the Poor Half of America (Original Post) xchrom Dec 2014 OP
5. Criminalize Them (see Ferguson) Scuba Dec 2014 #1
they aren't trying to dispose of us, just extract more wealth GreatGazoo Dec 2014 #2
Lifespan can be 20 years less. Way less in some categories. It is giving a death sentence to leave jtuck004 Dec 2014 #3
The herd can be culled passively by making health care hifiguy Dec 2014 #4
Kick for visibility hifiguy Dec 2014 #5
The Dead Kennedys nailed it KamaAina Dec 2014 #6
In the other thread I described how this happens in Oakland daredtowork Dec 2014 #7
 

Scuba

(53,475 posts)
1. 5. Criminalize Them (see Ferguson)
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 08:44 AM
Dec 2014
6. Most Insidious: Let Their Children Suffer

The U.S. has one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. Almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty. Nearly half of all food stamp participants are children. The number of homeless children has risen by 50 percent in less than ten years.

GreatGazoo

(3,937 posts)
2. they aren't trying to dispose of us, just extract more wealth
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 08:52 AM
Dec 2014

by creating an underclass they have ongoing access to cheap labor. Keeping the lowest wages extra low lowers ALL wages. The wage to price gap creates more need for credit which in effect allows banking entities to extract wealth from the have-leasts.

 

jtuck004

(15,882 posts)
3. Lifespan can be 20 years less. Way less in some categories. It is giving a death sentence to leave
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 08:54 PM
Dec 2014

people in poverty.

If they weren't trying to dispose of us, they would make sure everyone was flush, since they could then make more money.

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
4. The herd can be culled passively by making health care
Mon Dec 15, 2014, 09:03 PM
Dec 2014

and other necessities unavailable to the "undesirables" and "surplus eaters."

And if that doesn't kill them off fast enough Goldman and its ilk can arrange the commodity shortages to let the peasantry starve and/or freeze to death.

It is certainly all written down in detail somewhere by the banksters.

daredtowork

(3,732 posts)
7. In the other thread I described how this happens in Oakland
Tue Dec 16, 2014, 03:59 PM
Dec 2014

1) People who are out of work or who can only get irregular work, and who can't keep up with the ridiculous surge in rents, are falling back on Social Services. There they discover that if you aren't disabled, you can get $336month in General Assistance for 3 months out of a year...and that's just a loan...and even though that's only a fraction of what real rent is for a ROOM in the area, if you try to earn or otherwise get money for basic necessities above that $336 a month, it will be deducted from that paltry $336 in rent money (see my sig for details). Caseworkers have 900 cases apiece to process, which they regularly screw up: this defaults to stopping benefits: the onus is on the welfare recipient to go through the hassles of appeal and absorb the shocks and problems of delayed funds.

2) Recipients of General Assistance regularly receive forms which demand they report and document any form of work they are doing. These forms have a 2-3 day turn-around time, making it almost impossible for someone doing work to cope with. A person who is not working, and thus has 0 income, is expected to absorb the costs of the stamp and copies for dealing with these forms. Anyway, these forms warn of the dire penalties of failing to report any work you do.

3) Under the circumstances listed above, anyone who is not living as a dependent under someone else's roof and who is trying to avoid homelessness, is going to somehow have to supplement this $336 under the table. Since the government will know if you get paid via check, this probably means people are mostly forced into petty crime and prostitution to not just pay the difference on their rent, but to pay for utilities, bus tickets, medicine, basic necessities like light bulbs, toilet paper, and other non-food items you can't acquire with food stamps.

4) When you apply for General Assistance, Social Services makes it clear to you that there is a platoon of Fraud Investigators who are watching you, following you, interviewing your neighbors, etc. The State can afford to pay these Fraud Investigators even though they can't offer a survivable amount of General Assistance money. Therefore, after putting poor people in a position where they will be forced to cheat to survive (even the 3-day paperwork is designed to be impossible to return properly!), Fraud Investigators are sent to catch and arrest them.

In other cases it may not be the welfare recipient Grandma who went out to boost a few bikes to support the family, but the grandson. He will pay the price for the State's "set up".

5) After the people who were just trying to avoid homelessness are herded into prison, they get the "opportunity" to show they are reforming themselves by working at $2/hr prison labor jobs. This is close to slave labor since the pressure is so high on prisoners to "prove themselves" and to be able to earn a little canteen money. Also, these jobs can be very dangerous. In California, prisoners have died fighting forest fires.

So there you have it: California's welfare-prison-slave-labor complex. It's just the "disposal of the poor" that Alternet describes. And it's not a conspiracy theory at all. I've seen the Social Services part personally. I'm just lucky enough to be categorized as disabled, so I'm not on that wtf crazy, trauma-inducing 3-month out of the year plan. Seriously, no one who has never been in that system would understand how frakked up that is due to the hairball of paperwork, delays, appeals, and return trips to Social Services that this "3 months" would involve. And at a level of society where people are often taking irregular work that only last a few days or a few weeks, it's just madness to add that many tons of bureaucracy to those peoples lives.

Anyway: Disposal of the poor to welfare-prison-slave-labor complex in Oakland verified. No wonder a local pastor said much of the black population is too traumatized to even join the protests on their own behalf.

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