Relative Poverty Ideas

Relative Poverty Ideas

Brilliant. Jonah Goldberg serves a great analogy with which to skewer the Left when they talk about "income inequality."

Jonah Goldberg: Rich-poor divide shows poverty is relative

Many on the left -particularly those still in a Marxist haze -reject the idea that poverty should be viewed in absolute terms. But when you think about it, they have to. If we all agreed that many of the poorest people in America live with the material prosperity -cars, phones, air conditioning, the caloric intake of a Roman emperor -we associated with millionaires just a few generations ago, most of the liberal agenda would have to go out the window.

Of course, this is all easy for me to say. I don't live in poverty, relative or absolute. And many millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, put food on the table and educate their kids. But that's not because of income inequality. If Bill Gates doubled his income tomorrow, poor people would still have a hard time. Income inequality doesn't make people poor, it just strikes some people as unfair.