You are naive, John. Without poor people, where do you think I would get workers who are willing to put up with slave-wages and atrocious working conditions? How do you think I would be able to stimulate violence, civil wars, and insurrection in impoverished countries, if there were not many people suffering from a lack of food, habitation, medicine, and the other things that give people peace of mind? How could the ragtag armies that purchase my weapons convince 14-year-olds to abandon their toys and pick up an AK-47, were they not living in despair and squalor? How could I even be seen AS fantastically rich...if others were not wretchedly poor?

And I am rich, John. Very rich. No thanks to you. Many rich people are like you, John. They're naive. Some are even social idealists, who wish to improve the lot of humanity. I regard such bleeding hearts as rather pathetic specimens, since they fail to realize that eliminating poverty would be going against the basic needs of a competitive economy and would be disloyal to their own class in the end.

I've never suffered from that kind of fairy-tale thinking. If you want a teeter totter to move, you've got to increase the weight at one end. It's as simple as that. Poverty feeds wealth, and wealth confers exclusivity and authority upon those who most naturally merit it...people like me.