I met somebody once that hit the lottery and won over two million dollars! In less than ten years they were completely broke. I’ve also met a number of other people who came into a large amount of money through either an inheritance or an insurance settlement. Within a few years they burned through their money and were just as poverty stricken as before. I’m sure you’ve heard about such people. Why is this?
Why is it that some people in this world are able to fall into a big steamy pile of dung and come out smelling like roses while others can fall into a rose bush and come out smelling like crap? This is of course a hard question to answer but today I am going to take a shot at it. The short answer is that poverty is a state of mind!
I know that statement will raise the blood pressure of some people who read it. They just can’t fathom the possibility that money alone can’t always solve the problems we face in our world today. Let’s confiscate a few hundred billion dollars from people in the form of taxes and redistribute it to the more “needy” they proclaim and we can eliminate poverty in this country.
Since the so called “war on poverty” began in the 1960’s we’ve thrown trillions upon trillions of dollars at the problem with little to show for it. You’ve heard the parable “give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. With more people than ever before relying on some form of government welfare to survive, this has proven to be remarkably true. Do yourself and your family a favor and teach yourself how to fish.
If you learn to maximize your available resources right now and fix the problems of your most basic needs then you will be in a much better position to weather any economic storms in the future, be they recession, depression, or total collapse. Cut down on the waste in your life and you will probably see the equivalent of a 15 to 20 percent increase (if not more) in your purchasing power with the same amount of money you are spending right now!
Yes, there are poor starving children in third world rat holes who scavenge the local landfill every day collecting paper and cardboard just so they can afford a bowl of rice. This however is due to “mental poverty” on a national scale. Nearly all of the countries where you hear of this kind of behavior have an abundance of available resources. Look at Japan, a country with almost no natural resources at all. You never hear about people in that country resorting to such extremes to survive.
For me to say that “poverty is a state of mind” and leave it at that does not tell the whole story. I know this. But it certainly is one of the main factors in the overall equation. The United States has traditionally been a nation suffering little poverty, relatively speaking. We were a country of self-reliant individuals who knew not only how to survive, but how to survive well.
This is rapidly changing however due to incompetent individuals like Obama, Romney, and the other miscreants who are running this country into the damn ground.
But I believe we still have a little more time before we get to the point of a full blown depression. How much time is anyone’s guess but if you make a conscious effort to prepare for the inevitable right now then you will be ahead of the game.
Eliminate any debt as fast as you reasonably can. Find a place that you can call your own even if it’s just a small piece of land in the country with an old travel trailer on it. Stockpile essentials such as food, warm clothing, and a means to acquire safe drinking water.
Transportation is an area you should put serious thought into. How will you get from here to there? Will you walk, ride a bicycle, small scooter or motorcycle? If you plan to use a car or truck for your transportation needs do you feel like you will be able to maintain it and put fuel in the tank when times are tuff. What about when fuel prices double? These are all important points to consider.
Don’t forget your heating and lighting needs either. How will you deal with these issues? How about communication? Do you have a cell phone you can afford to keep turned on when you have very little money? Do you have a radio with enough rechargeable batteries (and a way to recharge them) to keep you informed about the latest news and weather and to supply a little entertainment from time to time? And last but not least, do you have a means of defense to protect what’s yours?
Plan now for what’s coming and you’ll be quite well off in when multitudes of people are getting evicted from tent cities and herded into FEMA camps for their “own good”. Take advantage of the relatively good times now and in the future you may not ever have to scavenge all day at the local dump for paper and other crap just to buy a single bowl of rice!
To the point, read this guy's story about the woman with the broken down car:
ReplyDeletewww.amerika.org/politics/why-i-dont-give-to-charity/
I used to teach ESL (English as a second language). On final exam day, I would write a list on the board: house, car, telephone, tv, vcr/dvd player, microwave
ReplyDeleteI would then go down the list and ask my students how many had a home, car and on down the line. I would get a varying show of hands. My last question was, “How many of you live in poverty?” Almost everyone would raise their hand.
My response would always be, “Do you know that in most parts of the world having any these things would put you in the middle class? Poverty is mostly a state of mind. If you thing you are poor, then you are.”
I don’t know how many minds I changed but I sure hope my students would begin to look at life in the USA differently. They had more than where they came from and didn’t realize it.