Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-15-Speech-2-269-000"
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"en.20111115.27.2-269-000"2
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"Madam President, I have to admit that I found reading this report disturbing. Just consider the passage ‘poverty is the unacceptable reflection of an uneven distribution of wealth’. What sort of report is this? A communist manifesto? Poverty is not simply a result of an uneven distribution of wealth, but of unequal access to opportunities. Calling poverty a reflection of the fact that wealth has not been properly distributed simply makes people passive participants; it turns people into objects that merely receive benefits on the basis of a fair distribution as determined by politicians.
When I read this report, I could not help but think of the American Declaration of Independence, where Jefferson describes ‘unalienable rights’ as being ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. That is how politicians set people free, namely, by saying that it is people’s own responsibility to create their fortune – to establish their own ‘pursuit of happiness’ – not by saying that it is politicians’ responsibility to distribute whatever resources may be available evenly. This is a disgraceful report. It could have been written during the Soviet era."@en1
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