A Swiftian Proposal from an Author Facing Homelessness

Using factors described below, it is manifest that the 46+ million “poverty class” statistic issued by the U.S. Census Bureau is bogus, and the true figure is 150 million. Clearly, these deadbeats (myself included) are the ones responsible for the U.S. Government deficit of 17 trillion dollars that is wrecking the nation. We 150 million losers have become a pain in the brain and backside of all the productive citizens who do not need government assistance or assistance of any kind. We 150 million lowlifes have become especially aggravating to the most important Americans, the Rich ladies and gentlemen, who are understandably fed up with having to look at increasing numbers of these filthy wretches begging on the streets and with having to pay more taxes to feed these undeserving deadbeats who cannot make enough money on their own to justify their existence. Now, before I present my “Modest Proposal for Preventing the 150 Million Poor from Being a Burden to Their Fellow Americans and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public and Especially the Rich Ladies and Gentlemen,” I have acknowledgments to make.
I acknowledge my inspiration for my solution to the poverty problem to Jonathan Swift, author of such works as Gulliver’s Travels and his equally famous 1729 booklet entitled “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents and the Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” The proposal keyed on having parents sell their children as food “for rich gentlemen and ladies.” A major impact of Swift’s satire was owing to his first describing the condition of Ireland’s beggars and starving children, and then socking it in an unexpected way to the Rich people of Ireland and England complaining about the burden imposed on them in the form of increased taxes necessary to pay for food, clothing, housing, and other expenses. Avoiding the anticipated plea for compassion and mercy from the Rich, Swift instead proposed his cannibalistic solution to the complaints in the following language: “A young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
I also acknowledge my debt to 1984 author George Orwell (Eric Blair) for his illuminating view of the attitude of society’s Rich people toward the Poor: “We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free” (from the book describing one chapter of his troubled life, Down and Out in Paris and London).
Now you know, an attitude like that toward the only part of society that really counts must come from a communist. And yet this hypocrite so widely admired for his democratic views helped the Labour Party of England foster anti-communist propaganda by furnishing its leaders with a list of writers whom he described as having pro-communist leanings. And you know what else he did? Though he pretended to be poor so that he could get free hospital treatment for his tuberculosis; the truth was that he was well off through his company George Orwell Productions. Shades of what the damn Poor people of America are doing today. Why admire this phony when you know that what he should have been doing instead of sympathizing with the Poor was joining Swift in urging their execution to provide food. So, just be sure that my debt to Orwell/Blair is understood as providing the correct attitude for the Rich to apply to the Poor.
Then there is Lincoln Steffens who, in his Shame of the Cities, taught us whom to blame for America’s problems. In two sentences that should be memorialized he noted first how “businessmen” are blamed for the corruption of cities but are “not pursued” [and, I add, rightfully so]. In the second sentence Steffens got to the heart of the matter: “Thus, most cities blame politicians and the ignorant and vicious poor.” Note how he tied those two together. Does that not tell you the truth about U.S. politicians today causing the bankruptcy of cities such as Detroit by continuing to dole out money to the vicious Poor?
Now, before I get to the correct solution for dealing with the Vicious Poor who are causing the entire country to go bankrupt, I have to deal with my 150 million figure that undoubtedly will be disputed. It starts with a statistic issued by the U.S. Census Bureau three years ago purportedly showing 46 point something or other million in the “poverty class” which, by the way, Barack Obama never mentions in his pretty speeches about the need to help people in the “middle class.” Understand, it is all political claptrap repeated by the mass media. Even if you go by the Census Bureau’s bogus statistics, there are by now 50 million in the “poverty class” consisting of individuals such as myself who have been dumped down into it from the “middle class.” But the problem with this “class” business is that the statistical difference is obliterated when you swing individuals or families from one “class” to another on the basis of a few dollars gained or lost; and it is all meaningless without breaking down the statistics with factors which show that millions in the “middle class” are more impoverished than millions in the “poverty class.”
New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia explained how phony it all is with this comment: “There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies, and statistics.” For the accurate and truthful picture, here are some examples of what you have to take into account (and this is just a partial list):
*Millions of individuals getting unemployment benefits which take them above the phony poverty line, but who nevertheless are impoverished because the benefit is not sufficient to keep them solvent.
*Millions who have lost their owned or rented homes and have thrown themselves on the mercy of their housed relatives, with the result that they are reclassified as part of households not in poverty.
*Millions living in their cars or on the streets who thus were missed altogether by Census takers who took data only from households.
*Millions reduced to living on Social Security or pensions of an amount that takes them out of the “poverty class” limit, but not out of poverty.
*Millions so poor that they are one medical bill away from disaster for the entire family if there is only one breadwinner and he or she is the victim of a critical problem needing treatment running into the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars not covered by insurance.
*Millions of family breadwinners who have to take two or three jobs for family survival, whose income then rises above the poverty statistic, but whose family nevertheless remains impoverished.
*Millions who get food assistance or some kind or financial assistance from private or government agencies that must report it, resulting in that being considered an asset which takes these people above the poverty line even though they remain in a condition of poverty.
*Millions who get a Social Security benefit increase that is not accurately based on the true rise in the cost of living, with the result that the increase takes them above the Census Bureau “poverty class” line into the “middle class,” though they are even more impoverished than before being so elevated.
*Millions whose lives have been based on a standard of living that has been drastically reduced as the result of their being laid off work and forced to take jobs paying far less money than they earned before and, consequently, leaving them unable to maintain payments still based on their prior income.
When you recognize all of that and many other factors as presenting the real poverty picture, then you know what America has to deal with: 150 million losers forcing all the rest of the 320 million Americans into paying more taxes since these deadbeats either pay no taxes or reduced taxes because they lack the ability to make an adequate living on their own, leading the “bleeding heart liberals” to generate more and more programs that the productive self-sufficient Americans are forced to support.
Look, people, America is not about handouts and sharing the wealth. America is about business. America’s true god is Mammon and America is about making money and profit. The losers who cannot make it on their own have to be dealt with sensibly instead of pouring more and more money into programs they need.
So that you know how objective I am in coming to my Modest Proposal for the way to deal with the Poor of this country who are dragging everybody else down, be advised that I myself am one of the Poor doing so. Not so long ago I was churning out articles, essays, and books that were making money and providing me with an opulent life. Then I made the mistake of becoming one of the “bleeding heart liberals” so justifiably ridiculed by the Republicans, the “moderate Democrats,” the right wingers, and the Tea Party. I felt so sorry for people in dire legal trouble who were unable to get lawyers to help them that I founded and directed a non-profit I used to get them benefits for which lawyers told them they were not entitled. See, the lawyers were trying to save money for the Rich people whose taxes would increase if the government paid benefits to these losers. But I, “bleeding heart liberal” Burton H. Wolfe, using my dirty tactics, obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in government benefits for these deadbeats whom the lawyers deemed ineligible for those benefits, thus increasing the tax rate. And can you believe it? I was proud of that.
Moreover, get this: I went so far as to sue some of the biggest organizations and corporations in the U.S. – in propria persona (unrepresented by counsel) – since lawyers were damned if they would cause more expense for these giants who then pass on their expenses of litigation to the public in the form of tax writeoffs. Okay, so big deal me achieved through my misnamed “public interest” litigation, for example, the forcing of the Walgreens chain to change labels on millions of their products which were fraudulently labeled, and I forced the credit card issuers to extend points for gifts on a four-year rollover basis instead of erasing the points after one year, and that supposedly benefited untold millions of Americans who had been unable ever to get a gift because those losers never spent enough money to get sufficient points. But the lawyers were right in refusing to take cases like that. All this stupid champion of the lower classes did was to cause the banks and organizational credit card issuers to spend more money that they have written off on their tax returns. See how stupid I was?
Now, when the non-profit mercifully ran out of funding and I tried to return to my formerly prosperous freelance writing career, I found that all of the editors I had worked with were dead or had retired, and the new generation of editors, not knowing me, deleted all of the emails and trashed the letters I sent to them, along with the thousands of emails and letters from struggling writers who are dealt with in that manner. Well, I was not insistent that they publish me again. In fact, they should not, because so much of my writing caused social reforms which have cost the opulent people more taxes. Fortunately, social reform writing is now considered “socially and politically incorrect” and so I figured I might as well give up on writing and apply for jobs. I applied for around 500 jobs, but nobody would hire me because they did not want to have an eighty-year-old fart (now 81) on their hands, especially one with medical conditions. Mine are coronary artery disease, prostate cancer, skin cancer, and osteoarthritis.
For the past three years I have struggled to avoid becoming homeless by begging for help to pay for food, rent, electricity, and other expenses. Finally I realize that it has been wrong for me to be doing that, and instead I should be joined with all of the millions of other people in the solution to the problem of our being unable to make it on our own and preying on the state and federal governments, plus organizations that offered help until now they are mercifully out of money to provide it — I know because dozens of them have told me so in rejecting my pleas for help. I did manage to wring $146 a month food assistance out of the Florida Department of Children & Families, and if you multiply me by tens of millions of individuals and families receiving food assistance from the state and federal governments – many getting a great deal more than I get – you see how much money all of us deadbeats are costing the productive people who are the only real red white and blue patriotic Americans, because they make money instead of begging for it.
So, finally, here is my “Modest Proposal for Preventing the 150 Million Poor from Being a Burden to Their Fellow Americans and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public and Especially the Rich Ladies and Gentlemen”: 
Erect human slaughterhouses in all of the states, execute the 150 million American poor, grind up their body parts, and feed them to the pet dogs of the opulent people who are complaining bitterly about these untermenschen because these subhumans are unproductive and are causing more taxes to be levied so as to provide food and other assistance for them.
I hereby volunteer to be among the first whose body, after slaughter, is to be chopped up and packaged for dog food provided to the Rich. I ask only that my body parts be given specifically to Barack Obama’s two pet dogs, with publicity of that event.
 
Burton H. (Buddy) Wolfe is the author of hundreds of articles and essays published in major newspapers and magazines, and of subject-definitive books such as The Hippies (New American Library) and Hitler and the Nazis (Putnam) that have been used for basic sources of study in high schools, colleges, and universities across the United States. He is now one of the millions of formerly “middle class” Americans dumped into the “poverty class” and about to become homeless after informing his landlord that he is unable to pay rent due. His ebooks are available at Mind Opening Books.