Fred Reed is worth reading. Following is an example.
I can’t be sure this link will work permanently, because of how Fred organizes his columns.
In any case it is numbered, named and dated. Look around a bit if you have to.
# 274 Pitying The Poor – May 16, 2005
Fred’s opening:
One reads much about the poor in America, their piteous lives, their blighted hopes, and the unrelieved downtreading of them by various social ogres such as oppressive corporations who sell them greasy hamburgers. (Why does my wretched spell-checker object to “downtreading”? You can’t be downtrodden unless someone downtreads you. How obvious is that?)
This I submit is goober-brained nonsense. America has precious little poverty, if by poverty you mean lack of something to eat, clothing adequate to keep you warm and cover your private parts, and a dry and comfortable place to sleep. In the “inner cities” or, as we used to call them, slums, there is horrendous cultural emptiness, yes, and the products of the suburban high schools are catching up fast. But poverty? The kind you see in the backs streets of Port au Prince? It barely exists in the United States.
He has at least one point. “Downtroddening” doesn’t cut it.