Damnit Poor People

Why I Wrote This:

I understand it's not people's fault that they are poor; even if it actually is.... lazy uneducated scum bags. Maybe if you took that loan the bank offered and used fertilizer & pesticides to develop your tiny paddy field you'd have increased your yield and not been stuck on subsistence farming like your family has for the last fifty generations.

Maybe if you had thought through why you were moving to the 'big city' as opposed to believing that in the big city everyone was so rich that even your idiot lazy cousin has his own car....next time check to see if he's a rickshaw driving Cabbie loon!

Poor people make countries (like Pakistan) look bad (particularly in numerical terms); do you see col awesome documentaries on rich people in developing countries, nope news outlets find the most crappy section of the almost perfect nation and then dig for stories and shoot their coverage from there. 

Did you know that estimated 40% of Pakistani's live below the poverty line...nope, and that's like 80 million folks....what about the remaining 60%, the majority that do manage to get make ends meet....what are we? Chopped liver and hence un-newsworthy?

So the primary question for most governments is...What do we do with all of the poor people?

Since their proposal suck (as always....tax breaks for poor people doesn't make sense if they don't pay taxes in the first place geniuses), I have a few ideas. 

1. Redefine Poor...Statistically: Make them less poor, re-evaluate the 'poverty line'; yes can debate on how fair or unfair it is, but it's an easy fix solution and governments do it all the time. It is a considerable achievement to reduce the number of poor people without creating any jobs or general economic growth for that matter. 

2. Fake Tax Returns: Lets just generate about 20-30 million fake tax returns and the write off the amounts due as 'unrecoverable'....due to wide ranging protest over the United States intervention in Afghanistan or something believable like that....Western countries love peaceful disobedience protests. 

3. Organ donations: I'm sure their poor peoples body parts are worth just money as money as rich peoples. The market for kidneys, blood etc are all worth $Billions, these impoverished folk can also be use for medical testing projects. They can use the revenue to educate themselves or just throw an amazing rave and hire DJ Tiesto to perform. The number of 'tourists' alone would be terrific for the 'kidnap rich white people' business.

4. Export Adoption: We'll make it unbelievable easy for people to come to Pakistan to adopt kids...however, there are some ..ahem...fees involved. Can we get some baby loving NGO's here? Doing this properly with a concerted publicity drive and eventually Madonna or Angelina will adopt a few of the little rascals and then the flood gates will open. If they don't we can simply claim that white folk are racist against Pakistanis....

'What are our impoverished kids not cute enough?'....no we can't plastic surgery at a young age is a terrible thing...we'll just sell their non-essential organs. Till we can exploit them in some other way...Camel Jockeys. Perfect.

5. Poor People Are Thin: They are skinny enough to be models....so lets make them into models; just throw on a little makeup, teach them some basic English words and maybe a little plastic surgery to cover up the cracks and everyone will applaud the future rags to riches story....the government will obviously keep a cut of all future earnings...to recoup their investment....and pay for some gold plated Jumbo Jets. We're Fly, 50 Cent ain't go nothing on us..

6. Government Jobs: The good old government can afford to hire more people (they always seem to after an election). They can make these newly inducted poor folk do things like staff the govt. agencies and specialize in tasks like having a dedicated chap to operate the fans via a cycle (prudently save electricity).

Create a human protective circle around each government officers important expensive car and run with them as they are driven, the savings from accidents and distinct lack of insurance premium, would pay for itself. Train these destitutes to operate blackberries and various brands of cell phones and have them man these devices for their illiterate bosses. All personal assistants are to get personal assistants. In another words, the government will hire anything with a pulse and find them any innate task to do...like smile maybe. Professional Greeters.

 The increase in an officials entourage would greatly add efficiency to that senior public servant, particularly once he discovers that the internet isn't just for porn.

In case the government doesn't want to hire them, just hire people on the books and process payment to their favored swiss bank account....trust me, I'm a banker, it'll work.


7. Pieces of Land: Give it to them, Pakistani's love the idea of being land owners, no matter how useless the land is. So I say the sitting government maximize the political benefits and do it Zimbawe style; they got rid of the rich white folk and gave their land to poor black wannabe farmers..(Note: That didn't work out so well for them, the country almost starved to death).

So in Pakistani terms, we tell the poor masses that the land belonging to a rival faction is being 'gifted' to the people. First come first served. Real Poor people own nothing, they'll get to their desired location in minutes family in tow, ready to start tilling.

They'll squat on that territory so fast, the rooster won't realize that all the hens were last nights dinner. The rival faction will be pissed, but those unlucky buggers will be outnumbered. Political Genius


8. Reallocate Them: Sell them and Send them abroad: Send them where ever someone can find them work...by the boat full mind you. They work really cheap, particularly once sold as indentured labor; Screw the UN Charters, and they'll send back foreign exchange through remittances....besides Slavery wasn't a fad, it's a classic and  it's going to make a comeback...I'm telling you! Particularly with the number of poor folk, it's economical. The revenues and savings alone can help build us our own Space Shuttles (80 million is a lot of people).

In the long run this can be part of the nations foreign expansion plan....have our poor peoples over populate other countries and then take over through democratic means....I love democracy. Why not export it humanely?

9. Proper Ad Campaigns: Make them advertise themselves better, get some funny entertaining signs while begging for alms, their revenues will shoot up and voila they won't be poor anymore.

FYI: It's a misnomer to consider professional beggars to be poor by any stretch of the imagine, I've done the math and they make more money by begging than most people with decent jobs...AND THE LITTLE SHITS MAKE IT TAX FREE!!!

10. Pretend they don't exist: What Poor People? Plausible deniability (mostly) works for Mossad, CIA, MI6 etc. I project a 100% chance of Success.

The Big Idea:

Developing Nations have more than their own share of poor people, and one can make the argument that it's a part of the teething process, but to be fair, that's hardly going to make a poor person feel better about his predicament.

We could just make them less poor, but that would require economic growth or something like that. Investments hard to come by, human capital is cheap, after all, we keep spouting out the little suckers. So why bother, lets just gloss over it as we tend to. A defeatist attitude hasn't hurt us yet...oh wait. oops.

We can be rich in life as we strive and are lucky enough to be, but end of the day, we all die poor.  Just something to think about the next time we see someone less fortunate than ourselves lying in the street begging for help.

The Beggarazzi

Anyone who has visited Pakistan (or any developing country for that matter) can't help but notice the multitude of beggars, whilst it would  be callous to think of every beggar as a professional beggar, drug addict, mentally ill, we grow tired of their constant prodding on every side walk, at every traffic light bugging people for money. 

Sometimes we acquiesce, sometimes we ignore them and sometimes we have the urge to cuss them out (rarely do we, as it would entail lowering the windows of our air conditioned cars and no one wants to waste cool air, its bad for the environment). 

But I think we should try to look at it slightly more constructively and find an awesome solution. None of the lame, pay the kids to go to school, or give food hand outs, or make the govt. give them jobs. Everyone has tried, yet it hasn't work. So I have come up with a uniquely awesome solution.  

I think of them as the Beggarazzi, as they tend to swarm and follow you at the slightest sign of weakness, which is what gave me my latest brain storm. 

Turn the Beggarazzi into Paparazzi. Yes, I am serious. Think about it, they have all the qualities to be successful.

1. They are masters are making people look at them with pity, even targeting people's sympathies, promise to pray for their fertility for a few rupees. (I'm not sure how God would feel about someone being paid for praying).

2. They have extremely well rehearsed lines that arouse a sense of humanity in the worst of us. They will have no problem in sticking to a script and eliciting responses/gather attention. 

3. Inconspicuous....when is the last time you remember what your local beggars wore? Whatever actual color the clothing was is now hidden by dirt and grime, they also have the scary ability to blend in with their surroundings....perfect for stalking a would be celeb. 

4. Completely thick skinned. They don't mind being despised by their bread and butter. The international Paparazzi all have one thing in common. Everyone hates them, (well except for publisher and editors). No one wants to associate with them, share a meal with them, and want nothing better than to have them out of their daily lives....sound familiar? 

5. They will have no problem working on commission, which means that they will be super effective to point of being willing to kill others to get the job done. Get'er done and they will with $$$ signs in their eyes and smiles all the way to the bank (though they may prefer cash).

6. When Celebs see these dirt poor people with camera's they can't help but feel sorry for them. After all, what celeb would (with cameras present) cuss out a poor destitute struggling to make ends meet. Traditional vile Paparazzi yes, no one likes them, but the Beggarazzi, would have their sympathy.  

Oh and we can get the Beggarazzi "Feed the Beggar" tee shirts, have a group of Bleeding Heart Volunteers drop off and give them lunch, so that they don't go hungry (while there on a stake out). It'll alleviate the bleeding hearts club because they can't stand to see others go hungry especially when in comparison you feel like a bastions of privileged.

7. They are Hungry....for success....well in all likely hood they are probably physically hungry too. So it's something they are used to. At least this way they have an avenue with which to make money and not annoying common folk (you celeb folk are screwed btw). 

Now I can see why some members of the Bleeding Hearts Club might see this at cruel and exploitative, and the current Paparazzi mish mash might feel a little territorial and go into a deep discussion about the merits of their craft and the skills and composition that goes into a good photograph and how beggars are unsuited for it. Fortunately, I have prepared some fairly simple responses. 

Dear poorly satisfied (yes I went there, some people just need to get laid) Bleeding Hearts: Please explain to me why it's not better that for beggars and destitutes to earn an honest wage, rather than live off others' meagre generosity. 

Lets not kid ourselves, they rarely give them enough money to buy anything other than cheap candy; and please don't make the ridiculous argument that so many people give them money that they earn a decent amount because it's insulting, you try living like that. 

This way they are able to live with dignity, I'm not saying that they'll be particularly well loved, but it's not like they were adored to start with. This way they can afford to feed their families and have a realistic dream for a better life, as well as a real future.

Dear Paparazzi: Digital camera's do all of that composition, light and angle crap automatically .....Your fucked. Even if they didn't your Editors care more about the content of the picture rather than the professional quality (assuming a basic level can be reached via digital cameras). Besides, cellular camera photo's go for egregious amounts of money. 

When you see a picture of Tiger Woods making out with Jude Law, your less concerned with the perfection of the shot, rather than the fact that two of world's biggest womanizers are making out. Sorry to bust your ego's about how your all artists, well your not. Your jobs are to chase people with cameras and I'll bet that the Beggarazzi can do a way better job than you can. 

It's a whole new world. Deal with it. However, in case life becomes too tough in the face of the severe competition there is always a begging spot open on 'Get the F**k Away from Me" Blvd.