Blog | Personal Finance

The Party of the Poor?

Why the only hope for you this election cycle is…you.

There are two storms brewing in Florida this week. One is tropical storm Isaac, which is expected to bring hurricane-force winds to the Gulf Coast. The other is the Republican National Convention, in which Romney is expected to be christened as the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee.

As you know, presidential politics are a circus, filled with sideshows of digging into the dirt of each candidate’s past, and main attractions filled with intense but hollow debates on issues. And the biggest show in the main attraction is the national convention. The key tactic in presidential politics is empty rhetoric and black and white positioning. And this year, it seems, the big dividing line is which party is for the poor and which party is for the rich.

Take for example, Peter S. Goodman’s feature on Huffington Post, “For GOP, Pitfalls in Ignoring the Poor,” which offers up the following statement: “In the modern-day Republican camp—a tribe that would have cast out Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and even Reagan as namby-pamby liberals—disdain for the poor is embraced as a virtue, a signifier that sentimentality will not get in the way of dismantling the social safety net.”

Translation: The republicans are the party of the rich. Implication: The democrats are the party of the poor.

For the democrats, capturing the hearts and votes of the poor is a smart tactic. As Goodman points out, “Some 46 million people—more than 15 percent of the nation—are officially poor. Tens of millions of formerly middle-class families are threatened with joining their ranks. Food banks, unemployment offices and homeless shelters from California to Florida are crammed full of people who, for the first time in their lives, are there asking for help.”

If the democrats can position the republicans as against the poor and their party as for the poor, they know that they can run away with the election.

But are the Democrats really the party of the poor?

If you’ve read my books and blogs for a while, you know that I believe that neither party is for the poor. Rather, both parties are controlled by the rich for the benefit of the rich. They simply go about benefiting the rich in different ways.

The Republicans are more direct in their support for the rich in that they favor limited government, lower taxes for the rich, and lush corporate benefits.

But the Democrats also benefit the rich. It’s the Obama administration that has done little to address the gross negligence on Wall Street that has led to much of the downward spiral of the middle-class into the ranks of the poor. It’s the Obama administration that has worked with the Fed to allow quantitative easing, which has led to inflation, and will lead to even higher inflation—a hidden tax on the poor and the middle-class. And it’s Obamacare that hurts not the rich but small businesses and the working class.

During this election cycle, both candidates will try their best to sell you on the fact they are your savior. The reality is that politicians cannot and will not save you. Only you can do that. And the only way you can do so is by learning to play by the new rules of money—the rules of the rich.

I’m neither a democrat nor a republican, and the purpose of this post is not to endorse or disparage either candidate. But I know for a fact that neither party is for the poor. It’s the rich that benefit most from our political system, and it’s been that way for a long time.

So here’s my word of advice to you: If you want to move from poor or middle-class to rich, don’t rely on politicians to get you there, and don’t get distracted by this year’s big political circus. Instead, rely on yourself.

And the best way to become rich is to know how money works and to make it work for you. The only way you can do that is through financial education.

This election cycle, cast a vote for yourself, and start your financial education.

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