Who's the Dumb One?

You go to work everyday believing in the American Dream. You work hard all of your life, and save your money for a down payment for a house. You purchase the house and then for the next thirty years, the American Dream turns into a nightmare if you don't pay the property taxes.

They take taxes out of your paycheck at work. You pay taxes when you buy shit at the store. Every time you turn around you're paying a muthafucking tax. Then that so-called American Dream house you purchased and are still making payments for, now has a lien on it and is being sold for back taxes.

Meanwhile, there are Habitat for Humanities Organizations who build homes for poor people on public assistance.  The people don't have to come up with a down payment. They put sweat equity into it and then they're property owners. They don't pay taxes because they're poor and they get a bigger tax return than I do.

Maybe I should have let my family become destitute and lived off of the system for ten years. Then maybe someone would have built my ass a house instead of me working eighty hours a week for a year, which resulted in me having an arrhythmia heart attack just to get the down payment.

So I ask the question, who's the dumb one?


Ghetto Bastard: A Memoir (Volume 1) and Ghetto Bastard 2 (Volume 2) by Russell Vann