Ghettoes are the same all over the world. They stink. — Enter the Dragon

I have seen only two real castles in my life.  I have walked in 10 or 12 cathedrals or temples.  I have seen skyscrapers on three continents.  But everywhere I have gone, there has been a ghetto, or whatever they call the place where the poorest of the poor live.  It’s the part of town where the police don’t want to go, especially after dark.  It’s the part of town where the trash is either heaped up on the curb because there are no services this month, or the trash has been picked over and is what the people are wearing and what the buildings are made of.  A lot of times, it’s both.

There are super-rich in every country of the world, as far as I know.  There is also crushing poverty in every country in the world.  The way that I know a country has at least some economic freedom and a relatively clean political and business environment is that there is a big squishy middle class between them, and it is possible for someone from the slums to find their way out by working hard and staying out of trouble.  The true mark of a good society is that it encourages those who do better to come to the aid of those who live in the ghettoes.

I know a society is in trouble when there is a precipitous drop between those who live in ivory towers and palaces and the ghetto, with few places in between, and the knowledge that a child born in poverty has almost zero chance of having a decent life.

What worries me is that in our country, we are headed in that direction.  There is still a large middle-class in our country, and our ‘poor’ live like kings compared to most of the rest of the world.  Most of our poor are poor when compared to our rich, but not to other nations.  There is so much prosperity here that I cannot fathom why more people don’t find a way to work their way up the chain a few links.  But rather than work to move more people into the middle class, our society seems bound and determined to move more middle class people into the ghetto.  Our ghetto is a slave district of dependence and desperation, and every move by the government and ‘right thinking people’ of both sides of the political argument seems to push us closer to a two-tiered society, where the super rich gaze down on the ghetto.  We are fast becoming a society where a despondent and apathetic populace pick through the leavings of our ancestors to eek out enough of a living to dull the pain and numb the mind.

This isn’t the world I was born into, and it’s not the world I want to leave to my children.  If you want to ask me why I am so harsh about political, social, and economic freedom and equality of opportunity, it’s because I’ve seen too many ghettoes.