“Cutting taxes for the rich is the best anti-poverty program. I’m mindful of what a pipe fitter once said to President Reagan: ‘I’ve never been hired by a poor man.’ A growing economy is in the interest of every working American, regardless of income.” — Mike Pence, then Indiana Representative, on how to help the poor in New Orleans after Katrina, from the Washington Post, 2005

Rembember America’s “War on Poverty”? Ever wonder how we won it? So do poor people! But it’s a fascinating story and we’re going to tell it, in a comically cynical documentary film guaranteed to tick off people on both sides of the argument.

“Eat the Poor” will take a satirical look at poverty in the 21st century – a golden era that produced an explosion of billionaires siphoning money from a dwindling middle class and relegating “millionaires” to laughing stock status among the super-rich.

Let’s face it: We hate poor people. They’re a public nuisance, a drain on our resources, lazy, stupid and shameful. There’s a reason we refer to them as “poor bastards,” and it isn’t sympathy — it’s loathing. The bastards! But the sad reality is that you can’t have the “Haves” without the “Have-Nots,” so it looks like we’re stuck with the poor bastards… but we don’t have to like it.

“Eat the Poor” will delve face first into the slushy truth that is “The Poor.” In interviews with genuine poor people, we’ll see firsthand what it’s like to not actually have money, or things. We’ll go where the poor are, see how they live. Visit their shacks, tenements and welfare hotels. Sit in their thrift store furniture. Eat their rancid, fatty food. And then leave.

By definition, the poor have always been those on the lowest rung of
the economic ladder. However, with the rungs at the top getting further from those on the bottom — like a fireman’s ladder to infinity (and beyond!) — the definition of “the Poor” is changing as well. Who the poor are and how they got that way has evolved away from the notion of an underclass made up of recent immigrants and those who missed the economic gravy train, towards a definition that includes more “new poor” every day, from victims of circumstance (and predatory lenders), to casualties of corporate America’s bottom line, be they trusting former employees, or ex-CEOs of energy companies.

And it’s our job to examine the problem, make them feel a little worse and us a little better.