Need Before Greed: Trickle Down, Then Cut Taxes

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Homelessness is fairly pervasive in America whether we choose to see it or not.  Most Americans don't get too distracted or concerned with the homeless because Fox News has told them that those without housing are basically able-bodied men who choose not to work.  Lock them up and the problem will be solved.  It is also easier to ignore homelessness when it stays out of sight and away from our neighborhoods, but when the homeless start getting underfoot, or in our way, or affecting our property values, then something has to be done.

When the homeless do start getting in the way and becoming a public nuisance, the response is often to attack the symptom rather than the underlying cause.  Communities respond with ordinances that essentially make not having a place to stay at night a crime.   Laws are hurriedly passed to remove encampments, prohibit sleeping in public parks, or on beaches, or on the streets - with the apparent aim to drive those without fixed abodes into other communities - move them on down the road - or what is sometimes referred to in the mental health community as "Greyhound Therapy."

Symptoms be gone, problems be gone - though, of course, the problems have just been shuffled elsewhere.  Addressing the actual problem - that of people having no place to live - would involve more expensive and complicated solutions:  building more affordable housing, adding more shelters and food pantries, mandating minimum wages on which people could actually survive, providing safe and affordable childcare for working parents. offering much more comprehensive mental health screenings and services, training police to deal with homeless people in a compassionate and humane manner, and developing a national conscience that really does care about the least among us.

Giving tax cuts to the wealthiest few while so many try to survive on nothing is counterproductive and immoral.   Combine that with shrinking government services to the poor and disadvantaged, and it borders on being criminal.  

Let the billionaires earn those tax cuts by first investing in training, and jobs, and housing, and services to create an America where everyone can afford to go to work and be productive.  We've been waiting over forty years for the tax incentives to the ultra rich to trickle down and lift everyone's boats, and it just has not happened.  Instead of gifting tax cuts to people who don't need or deserve them, let them earn their tax cuts by investing in their fellow human beings and ultimately in America.  

Need before greed.  Trickle down first, and then we can talk tax cuts!