The causes of Poverty abound; the solutions to it, are often a long and difficult road ... if they exist, waiting to be discovered, at all.
Unless one is born Rich -- achieving that metric of comfort, status, and security -- does not come easy. If it did, most everyone would move there.
If one is born Poor -- achieving some fragments of stability, recognition, and hope -- can be a hit-or-miss proposition. One day you have a few more fragments, the next day you have a few less.
Poverty ... is it a state of mind, or a state of life?
Do people choose to be poor, or are the societal powers and/or life-forces, super-stingy when it comes to stocking the "opportunities buffet"?
Far too often in the Diner-of-the-Real World, it is NOT "all you can eat" ... more like "first come, first served." Hurry while supplies last!
Here is one person's take on the topic. It kind of seems like they've seen both sides of the coin -- the haves, and the have-nots.
Are Poor People Responsible for their own Poverty – No
by M. L. Larzelere, worldissues360.com -- Jan 22, 2010
We are masters of our own fate. We reap what is sown. We get out of life what we put into it. Life is full of choices. Those who believe poor people are responsible for their own poverty would have us believe the poor had a choice either be poor not be poor. After all, we all have choices. While ultimately choice always comes down to two options, the pool of choices may or may not be in favor of the chooser. I submit that most poor people no more strive to live in poverty, than a snowman yearns for a warm sun.
To claim poor people are responsible for their own poverty places the choices down to two options; a person can be either poor or not poor. The people, who believe the poor choose poverty so choose because it is the mindset people in poverty, live by. While this may be true, people who live in poverty have a mindset that perpetuates the condition it does not conclude such mindset is by choice.
History has long shown that poverty is not so much a choice as it is a condition of life. One can look at just about any historical society and observe the haves and the haves not. [...]
If one is born Poor --
they may choose "not to be Poor." But that simple "positive choice" --
does not automatically make it happen. That is where "work" and those "available opportunities" for self-betterment, come in.
And when the default condition is for those opportunities "to work" to remain few and far between (and even more so unaffordable "educational opportunities") -- What is a "poverty-stricken" person to do?
No matter how many bootstraps you got -- if there are No Jobs to walk, ride, or run to, then those 'boots of self-determination' are most likely remaining stuck, in the dreary mud ... of going Nowhere.
The causes of Poverty abound; the solutions to it, are often a long and difficult road ... if they exist at all, waiting to be discovered.
"People no more strive to live in poverty, than a snowman yearns for a warm sun."
The condition of poverty no more depends on self-determination and personal choice, than does the hope achieving World Peace. And ending hunger in our life-times.
It's good to have noble goals ... but sometimes those opposing life-forces have other plans.
the Causes of Poverty -- Wikipedia
War
Famine
herpes
Disease
Declining union influence
Economic structures
Lack of education
Fathers leaving the family
Divorce
Teenage pregnancy
Domestic abuse
Employment abuse
Immigrant status
Minority status
Prejudice
Physical and mental disability
Loss of job
Low wage rates
High medical bills
Fraud
Oppression
Theft
Disasters
Fire
Flood
Poverty Imperative
Lack of or inability to afford adequate health insurance
Industrial change
Apathy
Greed
Overpopulation
Inequality
Dictatorships
Racism
Globalisation
Social Factors
High taxation
'Curing these troublesome human-conditions' take keen problem-solving skills, it takes dogged idealistic action, it takes good-old fashion human help and societal-giving. And good luck. And good-will.
Often these upward-leaning forces, are in very short supply too. The condition of 'constant competition' can have that wearing effect on our global human condition, too.
Maybe someday we will live in (arrive at, constructively build) a world without Poverty -- at least one where that's NOT the "default condition."
To many of us, that world cannot arrive soon enough.
But to others among us, those of the hard-love, help-withholding, earn-your-own-way mindsets:
The causes of Poverty abound; and the solutions to it? ... well just ask the 'snowman' ... during those warm January Thaws ...
"It's Sink or Swim, Frosty. Either move or melt. But no worries though, melting away ... is not really that bad," those hard-liners say. "No one's complaining about it, anyways."
...
At least, no one that they care to hear ... or help.
[ File: Frosty in Quidhampton - geograph.org.uk - 1660334.jpg -- From Wikimedia Commons ]