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Bernard Barclay | + Follow Poet |
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Ten Dollars Per Week Is Just Half Packet of Smokes

I have tried to teach people
that saving ten dollars per week
together, as a group of people 
can create wealth

If you invest each week
and help it grow,
you could buy off the internet
and sell through garage sales,

watch television
you could go to
secondhand markets
and sell at auctions

You can buy equipment 
and start your own cleaning service
thousand of people could add to my ideas
one hundred people saving ten dollars per week

Could be used to buy houses
one thousand dollars per week
fifty-two thousand dollars per year
the deposit every year for a house

the planet has six billion people 
six billion people times ten dollars per week
is sixty billion times fifty-two
the money to build anything

Desalination plants 
factories 
anything you can imagine
granted there would be problems

people buy houses 
sometimes tenants won't pay rent
people buy, franchises
and some lose thousands  

We can all watch the news
and see the risks of small business
five of six small shops 
shut down, across the road from us 

I presume, they could have made a profit
but some shops, never have customers
with rents wages and running cost 
going into business is hard

yet if people don't go into business  
nobody would have jobs
the word on the street, people say
companies get away

with not paying tax
maybe that's the truth
but companies pay wages 
and workers pay tax from those wages

So indirectly companies do pay tax
I watched a female manager
who owned a coffee shop saying 
it's not fair, the wages a too high

I can't take time off I can't afford the costs
every day she worked and struggled 
to make a profit, business is hard
but growing small business 

is what builds your economy
Mr Bill Gates started micro soft
from his back yard 
now it makes

thousands of dollars per second
Imagine what he could do
with an investment 
of sixty billion dollars per week

But I can't afford ten dollars per week
well that's true when people get only 
seventeen cents an hour
when people live in poverty

Watching their children die
ten dollars per week 
would be more than they could afford
That why I suggested 

Encouraging Industrialized nations
employees to become investors first
ten dollars per week is just half a pack of smokes
you spend more going out to the pictures

Copyright © Bernard Barclay | Year Posted 2020

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