The Jamaica Star :: Commentary :: Money can buy life

Jackass sey de worl' no level. Jackass sey all who a chat bout money cyaa buy life nah really pene wha dem a sey.

Y'all poor people love to comfort yourselves in your state of penury, your miasma of 'moneylessness' (aka bruck pocket) by saying 'money can't buy life' and 'if life was a ting money coulda buy, de rich woulda live an' de poor woulda die'.

Well Jackass is here to tell you the cold, hard truth (which you already know, but like to pretend that there is some sort of virtue in poverty). Money can buy life. Life is a thing that money can buy, that's why the rich live and the poor die.

If somebody who can afford to buy a big heavy SUV collides head-on with someone who can afford to buy a flimsy deportee at 100 miles per hour, if one of the two dies who will it be? Sure as hell won't be the person way up in the sky in a street legal tank and more air bags than a puffer fish has puffs.

OK, say there is no 'died on the spot' and both somehow suffer identical life-threatening injuries and go to hospital. Who is more likely to go to the great driver's land way up in the sky, the person who can afford the best medical treatment or the person who does not even have health insurance?

Gwaan fool oonuself, bout money cyaa buy life.

People with money?

It is poor people who live in the 'garrisons' (the moment the entertainer, sportsman or 'druggis' starts to make money it is straight uptown) and make the news in groups of two or three. People with money? The only drive-by they know about is driving by the security guard in front of their houses. It is poor people who live in houses that are perched on a hillside or cotched beside a gully and in a condition that makes them prime candidates to make the news at the first breeze blow.

Money cannot help

And it goes on and on and on.

Jackass knows that there are circumstances in which the rich die, cases where money cannot help. But those are the exceptions. And when they die at a ripe old age, there is sure to be some person who is proud of being poor who will say self-righteously "if live was a ting". Gu weh! Everybody must die (even Jackass) and if you get old, live well and die, what more could you want?

Find ways to compliment themselves

The world is not level at all, because people who are committed to being poor often find ways to compliment themselves on their lack of ability or lack of ambition (or both). And the terrible thing is that they often convince not only themselves but also people around them that earning money is some sort of crime, that it can't help you in the long run, making company for themselves on poverty row.

And you know what the hottest thing is? Poor people love the biggest, most expensive funerals.

Jackass sey de worl' no level. Jackass sey money can buy life, jus' try no mek it inna wan way whe people wi likely fe bullet yu fa!