Can we just say Rick Perry is an idiot, and leave it at that?
Last week, Perry studied income inequality and economic mobility with experts Scott Winship, Erin Currier and Aparna Mathur. In the Post interview, he was asked about the growing gap between rich and poor in Texas, which has had strong job growth over the past decade but also has lagged in services for the underprivileged.
“Biblically, the poor are always going to be with us in some form or fashion,” he said. He cited statistics showing that since he took office in 2000, wages have increased among all four income quartiles. He said a young man who dropped out of high school in South Texas could make more than $100,000 a year as a truck driver.
Perry acknowledged that the richest Texans have experienced the greatest amount of earnings growth, but dismissed the notion that income inequality is a problem in the state, saying, “We don’t grapple with that here.”
Perry is probably thinking of this: "For ye have the poor with you always." Mark 14:7a. But Jesus was clearly thinking of this:
For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.
Deuteronomy 15:11
And why will the poor never cease out of the land? Because God has ordained poverty? Or because humans are sinful and selfish, and not even the children of Abraham ever tried to establish the year of Jubilee? Besides, Perry leaves out the rest of what Jesus said:
For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.
It's true that, in Texas, "We don't grapple with that here." But it hardly makes our indifference Biblical.
The Bible would call it "sinful."