Politicians, in their ultimate wisdom, have created dozens of programs to eliminate poverty.
Yet according to all government figures, there are more poor people today than ever before.
It is pretty clear that the programs that have been created to eliminate poverty aren't working.
Frankly, I think our politicians are taking the wrong approach.
Everybody wants to be loved, and politicians love the poor and like to give tax breaks to the poor.
So the poor are inclined to stay poor so they will be loved and won't have to pay taxes.
On the other hand, politicians hate the rich and like to tax them.
And nobody likes to pay taxes.
Therefore, the rich do everything possible to avoid paying taxes.
They buy tax free bonds, move their companies offshore where tax rates are lower, create trusts, and hire tax attorneys to come up with legal ways to avoid paying taxes.
When they avoid paying taxes, they become richer.
This makes politicians hate the rich even more and want to tax them even more; which makes the rich try even harder to avoid paying taxes.
Since everyone wants to be loved, hates to pay taxes, and does everything possible to avoid paying them, it seems to me the thing to do is tax the poor.
Then the poor would try to avoid paying taxes, would work harder to increase income levels, and in the process would become rich.
There would be widespread economic prosperity in this country.
New investments would be made.
More jobs would be created.
But this would create a new problem in our country.
If everybody became rich, there would be no more poor people to tax.
So politicians would have to create poor people so there would be somebody to tax.
Incentives for rich people to become poor might include food stamps and rent subsidies if rich people would stop working and stop creating wealth.
They might receive compensation for not working; health insurance at little or no cost; free college tuition; subsidized school lunches for kids; low-cost child care; and dozens of other freebies, all in the interest of creating poor people who can pay taxes.
Politicians wold make it even more attractive for rich people to become poor by promising to love the poor who pay taxes.
Which, come to think of it, sort of brings us full circle.
I have to admit this gets a little confusing as I try to sort out the flaws in my rationale.
Maybe this idea is somewhat twisted, convoluted, and needs to be thought through more clearly--which means it just may make sense to Congress.