I live just down the street from a Whole Foods. The place functions as a bit of a magnet for the local homeless population. They hang around outside panhandling, I suppose correctly surmising that this particular place to hit upscale clientele.

Not infrequently, I will see one of the homeless people sitting outside all foods with the purchase, generally a big coffee drink some sort. There are a couple that I see out there regularly, enjoying some sort of tasty latte thing, I guess. It always makes me happy to see that his folks are capable of scaring up enough cash to enjoy a nice hot coffee, or a muffin or whatever. What do one of those drinks cost at Whole Foods, anyway? Like a chai latte or something? $3.50? Four bucks? Something like that? $4.50?

That's what more than half the world has to live on every day. That, or less. Significantly less, for quite a few of those people. They are not spending it on chai lattes. Ever.

See, literally everyone in the United States has a higher standard of living than half the world. Everyone you see around you lives significantly better than half the world. Everyone. Including homeless people, unless they are significantly impaired psychologically and unwilling to seek aid.

The homeless people I see drinking coffee drinks at Whole Foods are able to treat themselves to things that at least half the world would consider an incredible luxury, and they can do so by hanging around and asking people for a little spare change for half an hour, an hour. Maybe longer on a rainy day. They can make purchases that a substantial portion of the world wouldn't dream of making simply on the financial effluvium our society produces. Change that someone doesn't want rattling around in their pocket anymore.

If you are truly a socialist, if you actually believe the core, fundamental principles of socialism, there is no moral excuse for redistributing resources within the United States. None. Zero.

There is no class of people in the United States who requires access to greater financial resources when compared to the rest of the fucking world. There simply is not. This doesn't just include direct appropriation and redistribution of resources. This includes every minimum wage law, every restriction on employment, every single method of directly or indirectly redistributing wealth from the top.

I've been told "we can at least take care of Americans first." But why? They don't need it. No, on no moral basis can we take care of Americans first. We would need to take care of so many billions of non-Americans and provide so much more for them before any American is even a remote concern.

Does a typical Wal-Mart employee need more money to get by? I don't know, does a single mother of five sleeping on a mud floor with her kids, dying of a simple tooth infection need more? Strictly as a matter of triage, who needs some extra cash more?

Do workers at Wal-Mart deserve to be paid more, for some reason? Is the market being distorted by corporations to suppress their wages. Sure, let's say it is. I think so. Isn't that single mum in Budundi functioning in that same global market? Is she not being victimised by that same corporate controlled global market, and victimised much more egregiously?

If you are a socialist, if you are a true socialist, you will understand this. Actual, pure socialism, true to its principles, requires redistribution of a huge portion of the wealth of the United States outward. True socialism, right now, would absolutely require a significant diminution of living standards for everyone in the United States. EVERYONE. Not just the mean old billionaires, not just the Koches, not just Donald Trump in his golden tower.

Every. Fucking. American.

That is true socialism.

Now there may be tactical reasons socialism has to avoid this very, very obvious and unavoidable fact. There is no question about the morality, but strategy might require shutting up about this. But we know why strategy would require this. The reasons are pretty fucking simple.

Racism and nativism.

That is it. That is 100% of it. Those are the only reasons. Acquiescence to the racism and nativism of the American populace. Genuflection to bigotry.

If not for racism and nativism, there would be absolutely no excuse for any socialist to expend one lick of energy on the financial plight of any American in lieu of the four billion people living on four bucks a day or less.

So cool, you can picket, you can call your congressman, you can support minimum wage laws, you can rage about ride-sharing and the gig economy if that's all your racist allies will allow you to do, but as long as you are talking about America and Americans, you are simply not fighting for the poor. If you are not talking about making America substantially less wealthy in order to make the rest of the world more, you are not talking about socialism.

You're not redistributing resources according to need, you're moving pocket cash around among the wealthiest 15% of the world's populace. You are not defending the needy, you are are trying to take a few nickels from the pockets of one rich man to give them to another. You're not feeding the poor, you're arguing about which lady in waiting gets to sit closest to Marie Antoinette at the high table, and who gets the biggest piece of her cake.