I have been writing at the Daily for close to three years, and I’ve come to realize that the subject most dominating my writing concerns the fight against wealth inequality and poverty. It is not a subject easily compressed into an 800-word column, so my repeated attempts to explain the causes of perpetual poverty come as no surprise. This point perhaps emphasizes the danger of reducing the issue to simple explanations like “laziness” — a common procedure at least in the rhetoric spewed forth by some of our politicians.

The fact is, a large composition of uneducated, self-centered and callous individuals has succeeded in establishing a pseudo-image of poor people in this country. We constantly hear talking heads drone on about how the United States has become a nation of “takers,” “moochers” and other oversimplified pejoratives. The real irony is the people who feel comfortable with reducing the issue of poverty down to feeble explanations are the ones who are too lazy to examine the evidence at hand.

We have been inundated by shoddy theories based on shoddy evidence touted by politicians, demagogues and “news anchors” — quotations because Fox News Channel is hardly news — that leap from one inflated talking point to another. These are the same voices who exult the American Dream as if it were still a real thing.  It’s not, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

Of course, I shouldn’t expect our politicians to understand what poor people endure everyday.  After all, most of our lawmakers are worth $1 million or more.

The Kansas Legislature is the most recent body attempting to humiliate the poor. Recipients who use welfare to feed their families and heat their homes are now being punished for spending money on “luxury” items. House Bill 813 prohibits food stamp recipients from using their benefits on “cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood and steak.” Because people who receive less than $7 a day for food can really afford seafood and steak in the first place?

This is the mark of pure and unrestrained hysteria.

Consider another bill put forth by the Kansas Legislature, which attempts to defeat Reagan’s “welfare queens” once and for all: the provision prevents recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program from withdrawing more than $25 dollars a day and prohibits spending of benefits in numerous locations including cruise ships. First of all, most ATMs allow you to withdraw money in $10 and $20 increments, not in $5 increments, so this is essentially $20 a day. As Shannon Cotsoradis of Kansas Action for Children notes, on top of this limit, TANF applies an 85 cent fee, and then there’s the ATM fee of a couple dollars, so the real amount is less than $20 — kicking poor people while they’re already on the ground.

Also, one fast quip, there is no evidence whatsoever that TANF benefits are being spent on cruise ships. The whole myopia of it all continues a false and gross narrative of the working poor and the inclusion of a cruise ship ban highlights gratuitous intentions. Sure, there are items and activities where the use of benefits should be prohibited, but there simply isn’t overwhelming evidence that this is a real problem.

Poor people already live under horrible conditions in regard to their financial security, nutrition and health, but enter Senator Michael O’Donnell, a champion of House Bill 2258 detailed above, who says, “this is about prosperity. This is about having a great life.” How unctuous and ingratiating this comment must feel for somebody who lives off of less than $7 a day every month. I’m sure it’s about having a “great life.” O’Donnell is only five years my senior, and, for the first time, I am willing to say provocatively and without respect that this man is an imbecile.

I often hear the piffle-filled screech that there is a war waged against the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the notion that we are a nation of “takers” is probably more precise when applied to the upper classes. Our government subsidizes private equities, hedge funds, beach homes, jets and yachts, bails out huge banks for their irresponsibility and doles out billions of dollars a year in subsidies to corporations. All of this should be unexpected, coming from the wealthiest Congress in our nation’s history.

No one is arguing that food stamps aren’t misused sometimes, but that does not represent the majority of recipients and it ignores the unnecessary benefits given to the rich who certainly don’t require the help of our tax dollars. Where has the priority of our country gone when we direct the cause of poverty at the impoverished?

As French economist Thomas Piketty notes in his book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” wealth has gradually become lodged in the top percentages of the income distribution, and due to our conception of the rich, as time passes, wealth will outpace economic growth. Basically, with our current policies, the rich will become richer and the poor poorer. This a consequence of a war on poor people, excessive exultation and adulation of the rich, and a complete rejection of evidence.

It sounds like prosperity reserved only for the wealthy — an American dream for some Americans. Sounds like a “great life.”