“
What do we mean by poverty? Not what Dickens or Blake or Mayhew meant. Today no one seriously expects to go hungry in England or to live without running water or medical care or even TV. Poverty has been redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of the income distribution is poor ex officio, as it were-poor by virtue of having less than the rich. And of course by this logic, the only way of eliminating poverty is by an egalitarian redistribution of wealth-even if the soc
...more
”
― Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
― Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
“
I tell you, say the rich,
the poor are naught
but dirty wind
welling in air-shafts
over the cinders
and droppings of
the past, their
voices thick
with grease
and ordure,
sewer-greed
to corrode the ear
with the horrors
of the past
and the voids
of new stupidity.
One could drown
waiting for the poor
to make
one fine distinction.
Yes, destroy us
say the rich
and you lose
the roots
of God.
”
― Deaths For The Ladies
― Deaths For The Ladies






