Strapping Young Bucks

Poor people are worth less than rich people. I mean literally, like cash-wise. Even factoring the differences between liquid and fixed assets, all the punitive fees and taxes attached to the gain and/or transfer of wealth, lawyer and accountant fees, varying levels of property taxes levied across the states and countries where primary homes, vacation homes or urban pied-à-terres are located, nannies (payment in cash), nannies (transportation from Central America) and nannies (generous donations to local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office Christmas party fund)--basically all the ways America is set up to penalize economic success and all the hard work one generation at some point put in so subsequent generations wouldn't have to put in any hard work--still in spite of all that, poor people persist in being worth less than rich people. These are people laying out zero dollars for pet colorists or foot masseurs and still have nothing to show for it. It's obvious whatever they have, it's being wasted.

Luckily, thanks to an intrepid few who dared to ask the hard question, even though they ran the risk of being hysterically condemned as racists just because they are using time-honored barely masked code-language to talk mostly about black people, we know how exactly poor people are wasting their money: food. And no, I don't mean speculating in agricultural futures like pork bellies or wheat, I mean actual food. Like stuff you eat. Yourself. This is what your country's poor is doing instead of building a responsibly diversified portfolio in, say, precious metals, a few blue-chip stocks and maybe the occasional flier on a tech IPO or handing over their nonessential cash to a hedge-fund. You know, like adults.

One hero in the Missouri state senate is out to stop this. He wants to make sure poor people can't be using food stamps to buy luxury food items like cookies or fish. That's right, in addition to monitoring how and with whom people copulate (or, to be fair, deputizing business owners to do it the monitoring for them), the Party of Small Government™would also like to check over your receipt before you leave the supermarket. Governmentally, they'd like to perform the same service they get really old people with highlighter pens to do as you walk out of the Costco. You know, if those people also had the power of judicial punishment.

Really this is an attempt to save poor people from embarrassment. Let's say we let them, without checking with us first, just buy a nice piece of halibut. How would they even know how to cook it? If someone tries to buy halibut, the guy at the fish counter should just say "capers." If they don't immediately say "lemon and tarragon," they get pointed right to the Gorton's aisle, under penalty of pepper spray.

There's talk of raising the minimum wage, as high as $15 some places, but to what end? More poor people on cruise ships, that's to what end. Know what happens then? They fuck your women and the boat sinks, that's all.

There are better uses for public money than food stamps. The best thing to do with public money is to give it to rich people, who have more experience handling it. Governments federal, state and local know this. They'll even fight themselves to make sure it gets done. In St. Louis, a city agency is suing itself to secure the right to give hundreds of millions of dollars in free money to one of the richest men in the world who doesn't even want it. And why doesn't he want it? Because he wants to move his NFL team from St. Louis to LA, where it will likely double or triple in value immediately just be upgrading the market it plays in.

See? That's the kind of person you could trust with a filet mignon.