sigh

KB's Top 5 Reasons The Poor Don't Rise Up

5) There's a difference between "destitute" and "desperately poor." If you have to give up your minimum wage job in order to protest being desperately poor, you're likely to end up destitute. If you aren't desperately poor, you have even less incentive.

4) "What do we want?" "mumblemumble" "When do we want it?" "NOW!" George Packer pointed out in The Great Unwinding that Occupy Wall Street was the largest social movement to ever arise without coming up with a single concrete goal.

3) Work Ethic. Nick Reding pointed out in Methland that the United States has always associated hard labor with virtue, virtue with wealth and wealth with hard labor. This is why the two largest populations in history with methamphetamine problems are the American poor and the Nazis. If you're poor, it's because you're lazy; after all, there's always a third or fourth job you can get and if you don't want to pick watermelons there's a Dominican with a real work ethic eager to take your slot, Johnson, now put your back into it.

2) I Ain't Homeless, I'm Between Jobs. Something like 40% of the chronic homeless suffer from mental illness. 40% suffer from addiction. Therefore if you're homeless you've got even odds that you're crazy, a junkie or both. Not crazy or a junkie? You probably aren't actually homeless, you're just a guy hopping couches, using Starbucks for WiFi, showering at 24-hour Fitness and waiting for your luck to turn. Better not to talk about it or you'll jinx it.

1) Consumption is cool. From Flip This House to Storage Wars it's easy to see that everyone can make it rich from unwanted crap. Have another credit card. Have another HELOC. Of course you need to spend $120k on a Theater Arts degree - college is about finding your bliss! And there's a credit card with 0% balance transfers so you can just skate that sucker on by - whatever you do, don't pay it off. That's not "going debt free" that's "deleveraging" and it makes Janet Yellen cry.

But the special bonus reason?

We have the most advanced military in the world and they've been giving their table scraps to police for so long that we don't even think it's weird that a squad of dudes in black body armor with machine guns should invade a house in the middle of the night looking for a pot dealer. Rise up? They will fuck your shit up and it's one thing to have your shit fucked up over civil rights. It's another thing entirely to have your shit fucked up over marginal tax rates.

While you were out protestin', son, I was out hustlin' and now not only do you have a broken wrist and a face full of pepper spray, you're also $20 behind me.

Fuck freedom get money.