Catalin:
I'm bringing it down to the microeconomic level.

truthsayer007:


Exactly !

Mindfulness:
I think it is a combination of factors that cause poverty but for me, the biggest factor in all of it is access to quality education or the lack of it. As a result of poor education, the leading classes find it easy to exploit 'the ignorant'. This, definitely, is one of the major reasons why many people remain poor or what we call working poor.

Since you have mentioned America, let me tell you how it works there. Access to education is controlled by a system that is divided into state schools and private schools with state schools in the rural areas designed not to give the working class children even decent elementary education. Almost 90 million of all Americans are 'functional illiterates' who believe people like Donald Trump, a privileged white boy, that he understands their plight and will save them and the Republican mantra that universal health care, which other developed countries successfully provide for all their citizens, is something to be repelled even though their aged parents die from treatable diseases because they are unable to cover medical bills.

They are so ignorant that they believe the mantra that they should be grateful for having a job that hardly helps them make ends meet under the mantra that if they do not work 12 hours on starvation wage, the company will have to produce abroad so that it can survive when in fact people like Rex Tillerson (a former manager and Trump's foreign minister) collected 180 million dollars for quitting his job from one of the global players that have become rich at the backs of the working people and by exploitation of the natural resources in other countries.

But the poor white man will never blame the rich - after all America is the land of opportunity they have been told and because without immigrants they would be rich - they have been told too. And they believe it because they were meant to be educated and brainwashed to be stewpid and remain so generation after generation. These same people vote for Trump and the Republican Party, the party that has been trying to suspend the Social Security Act and of which the suspension would hit same voters the most.

Catalin:
Good night too

AngelsAndStars:
LMAO... see different answers.

poverty is not anyone's fault but "the system"

in a society there will always be winners and losers, poor and rich. that's how is works. everybody cannot be rich but everybody can be poor(war torn)

the west successfully made necessary things available for their poor but African is a different playing field where greed reigns supreme hence poverty.

a society is maintained by force(military, police, etc) if not it won't hold. that's why the poor and rich can live side by side. fear of the state. law.

so at every given time in a society some must be automatically cursed to be poor while some must be cursed to be rich. if you fall in rich category thank your stars but if otherwise struggle out but if you failed to make it then call it"destiny (I don't believe in that though)

but know this. in every society there must be rich and poor. what we should be worried about is the gap between both classes.


Please are you saying "the system" cannot keep people poor?Thats amazing.Maybe you should study some economic theories of wealth in some nations of the world.Even in our nation here.But really good one from you.www.impartfund.com

Ugosample:


Truthsayer007 is right.
not true in all cases.

Infact, it is not true in many cases.
The 1% you talk about, you think it's all of them who did not work hard for their money, or Maybe you think those in that bracket were always in that bracket.
For many, they had to struggle, fight tooth and nail to get there, though some also got there via inheritance


Your brain is working.Why do we always think the developed nations are not as hardworking as we are?its because we dont understand what work is.The "white man" believes more in mental work which in my own estimation is more difficult than physical work.But we believe in gthe physical strenght.Both are good but one is more productive.The 1% you talked about,do we have any african among them?

Ugosample:


Nice submission.
You have captured my thoughts.
Some are born with certain advantages, some are not, and within those who were not, many eventually break away from that and move up the social ladder, even though most will not get to the 1%

baby124:
In every society there must be rich and poor. Coming from someone born with a silver spoon, starting out poor is an advantage in life. Life is hard, and being poor at a young age should make you wiser and equip you for survival. This is something the rich kid will not understand or relate with till they are hit with a crises which may be too late or too hard for them to deal with. It is only when one gives up that they remain poor. Also some poor people are content with their position and I don't blame them. Trust me it takes a lot of effort to keep up a rich lifestyle. Not everyone can hustle that much. We are all different and have different strengths and talents. The poor are also not useless to a society. They are very much needed.

Xensity:
Nothing is the fault of anyone. I'll try my best to explain my position.

Think about this. The attainment of wealth or the inability to escape the dungeons of poverty is a result of the slew of factors surrounding our lives, and how we interact with these factors. Example of these factors include: Being born into a rich or poor family, exposure to good, bad or no education at all, being born with good or bad genes, growing up in a healthy or unhealthy environment, easy or difficult access to lots of life changing opportunities, connections with financially successful people, etc.
Now, since we aren't in control of the circumstances that hover around our lives, like the ones I mentioned above, how can the results that arise from these circumstances be our fault?

Some people would also say that whatever bad financial state we find ourselves, is the product of the decisions we make, and hence our fault, since we had the power to make the right decisions but we chose to make the wrong ones. On the surface, statements like this seem sensible, but vetting more closely, the illusion of the statement's tenability begins to crumble. You would agree with me that our ability to make decisions is controlled by our brains, and our brains are composed of thousands of neurons firing at the same time, and this mechanism is what controls the machine of thought and decision making. But is anyone in control of the functionality of their brains? Some people naturally have brains that enable efficiency in certain tasks like decision making, while some people have brains that don't function as effectively in such tasks. Would you then say that it's the fault of the later if they make bad decisions?

Also, the decisions we make, besides being governed by our brains, are also modulated by the experiences we've had in the past and the kind of mindset and ideas, those experiences have ingrained in us. This means that by dint of past experiences, some people would be better molded to function more effectively in areas that would potentiate the attainment of wealth than others. But would we now say that it's the fault the other set of people who didn't have the right combination of the experiences that would facilitate financial success, because they weren't able to extricate themselves from the quagmire of poverty?

You should also not forget the essential role luck plays in the lives of people. In life, some people just have it easier than others. It's like certain people have an aura of favor that envelopes their lives, while some just have the opposite.

I am not trying to paint being poor as a state to be comfortable with, but saying it's the fault of the poor that they are poor, is intellectually naive.