This isn’t a war on poverty; it’s a war on the poor. There’s no surer way to turn those on the bottom rungs of society–including geniuses like Orwell–into a legion of lazy, frustrated, and even aggressive bums and freeloaders. They’re being trained for it. If there’s one thing that we capitalists have in common with the communists of old, it’s a pathological obsession with gainful employment. Just as Soviet-era shops employed “three clerks to sell a piece of meat,” we’ll force benefit claimants to perform pointless tasks, even if it bankrupts us.
