How are people programmed to live in poverty?

Question

I am trying to understand the system that is used to produce poverty? " Is poverty a state of mind?" Is poverty in existence because of people making bad choices and pu t thereself in poverty or is there a leash on people that live in poverty to use as an anology they can only go so far?

Answer 1

No people are not programmed to live in poverty. the people that do live in poverty are always done by their choosing and they may be forced into it, and most people never get use to the conditions, and die from them or have ill health

Answer 2

I am an economist, maybe I can answer this.

Poverty is determined by a very specific set of things.

First and foremost is education. In the United States, education increases wages by 8-12% for each year of education past the sixth grade. The reason is scarcity. Diamonds are more valuable than water, even though water is more useful, because, on the margin, diamonds are more scarce.

If you have a PhD, you are more rare than someone with a master's degree and so forth. If there wasn't an education premium, people would never get educated. More than any other non-job specific factor, education leads all others.

There are two reasons for this. In a perfectly competitive market (which in reality are approximated but do not exist) people are paid the marginal product of their labor. Owners get the marginal product of the capital they employ. The more productive you are, the more you get paid. Because of education, technology and know-how, the median American produces 200 times more product than the median Bangliadeshi worker. Bangliadeshi workers work for 1/200th the wage of an American, but they also produce 1/200th of the product.

The second part of wealth and poverty depends upon the institutions that surround the economic environment. The greater the freedom, the higher the capacity to fairly contract.

Let me provide two examples. Imagine the license plates in your state are six digits and can be any combination of letters and numbers. There are 36^6 possible combinations in a perfectly free system. Now imagine your state uses a code so that the first letter is the month the car was registered, so you have twelve choices for the first digit. Let's also assume they only use letters for the second and third digit and numbers for the last three digits. You now have only 12*35^2*1000 choices. Law has reduced the flexible choices.

Now imagine you are planning a product, but the law restricts the materials choices, not because they had your product in mind, but to protect people from a completely different product line. The safety rules in fact may even harm people in your product line because laws cannot be constructed flexibly. Owners and engineers and employees and customers have had their choices reduced. They are less free to contract in the most rational way.

There is a well know 1-1 relationship between freedom to contract and economic well being. In my own state, economists estimate the state's protective laws reduce household income by nearly $22,000 per family. That isn't trivial, especially to the poor.

The minimum wage is a good example. If you have a poorly educated worker, who is a marginal worker, as long as their product is greater than the minimum wage, they can have a job. If their product is below a change in the minimum wage, they lose their employment. They would voluntarily work for the lower wage, but the law makes it illegal.

They cannot get on the job training, so they fall farther behind. If they work under the table and are injured they are unprotected. Freedom restricting laws, such as minimum wage laws have been shown in hundreds of research studies to contribute strongly to pernicious poverty as do price and rent controls.

Finally, property rights matter. If a village headman, or a state economic development authority can take away your property then people invest less, employing few at lower wages.

Poverty is partly a state of mind. A marginal worker facing few choices will not trust when choices appear because they have seen them go very wrong before. It is part of making poor choices, such as dropping out of school, but it is also from restricted freedoms.

Your question has no unique answer.

Answer 3

Well, its alot easier to become upper middle class as an adult if you had all the benefits or one as a child. If a child is in poverty, its is much harder to focus or even afford school when they need to be working to help support the family or what not. Everyone has made bad choices but that is not always what sends a person into poverty. Disease or death often trigger it. But yes, bad choices often do cause poverty, it just depends whether or not it comes back to bite you in the a$$. Poverty is the way a person exists. Poverty is real, its not a state of mind because mind can soar above the roughest conditions. Conditions are real, therefore poverty is a condition much like a diesease.

Answer 4

Since this is actually an semi intelligent question, I will answer it almost seriously.

Poverty is not a state or mind to be accepted with a sense of defeat. Poverty stems from many things but the root core is the political ethics and stability.
A perfect example is the middle east where there are billions upon billions of dollars flowing from the rich oil fields…yet, this is one of the most impoverished, violent and illiterate parts of the world. Why? Because those who run and control the country and chosen to basically rape the people in order for them to live in extreme self indulgence.
Other countries/areas that this occurs in? North Korea, Brunei, Venezuela, China, and every African nation (the list is basically almost the entire world).
Kids in this country have absolutely no idea what poverty is. Most think that it is not enough food or not having good clothes to wear. It goes much further than that. Actors and celebritites that are activists are also unfortunately very ill informed and have some form of hypocritical agenda. They DRIVE their SUV’s to protest the war in Iraq because it is a war about ‘oil’. Do you see their hypocrisy? Can you finally understand that they are what I call ‘convenient protesters’? They are up in arms as long as it doesn’t affect their way of high living. They insist on us driving hybrids. But look at their silly claim…it still uses oil. They paint a hypocritical holier than though image but really are part of the scourge of the world.
Donating money, donating shoes and etc does NOTHING for poverty in corrupt countries. In fact, it perpetuates the problem. Give money to a starving child? Guess where the funds need to go through? Yep, corrupt government distribution systems. Do you really think that the majority of donated money makes it to the kids you are trying to help? Sure, the corrupt government will allow ‘some’ kids to be helped and to be shown but guess what? Westerners are so guilt ridden that this will spur further ‘donations’. Do you see the problem yet? Giving money not only perpetuates misery, it increases it.
Ever talk to people from extremely poor nations? They don’t feel defeated. They don’t feel depressed. They don’t feel hopeless. This is the wonderful work of cameramen, editors and ‘charity’ companies to portray a depressing image to persuade the money out of your pocket. Why? Why? Why? Because the ‘charities’ have ‘administrative costs’. What does that mean? It means that your donation creates their paycheck. I was sitting in a $1500/day luxury spa one day and right next to me was an ‘executive’ from a charity. Think I can make this stuff up?
Get real. What is the solution to poverty? That is not the gist of this response. Contact me if you want to talk to a very very intelligent person. Yep, not ashamed by any means to say that. I don’t have a self deprecating, low self esteem coupled with false humbleness.

Answer 5

Poverty is relative. 300 hundred years ago most people in the western world lived in what we would call poverty--poor medical conditions; rotting food; famine; rags for clothes; rivers used as open sewers for human waste, etc. Those who have money make those who have less money look impoverished.
But what prevents some from pulling themselves up from their bootstraps and becoming a Bill Gates or an Oprah Winfrey? Sometimes very little--except that Gates and Winfrey and others in their class have dreams that make ours look RELATIVELY impotent.

Answer 6

I think, poverty is a state of mind more than actual poverty, Poverty stikes only when one feel povery and not otherwise. somoe studies revael that the most poor country people are the happienst in the world, and the people in ridh countres are most un happiest. This is just state of mind and that is all. One can not be poor, when one do not feel poor, no matter how you classify him.

Answer 7

A lot of people who live in poverty don't know any better because everyone around them lives the same way and it has always been like that.
If that is all you have ever known you don't realize there is anything different.
Same with kids that grow up in a drug house or on welfare, they think that is the normal way to live.
Sad isn't it.

Answer 8

Some people are raised in poverty and don't know the truth of education in overcoming their circumstances. They know the norms of their family that makes it very difficult to break out of their destination. They often have no support systems to go to school or financial backing and have to make great sacrifices to do so.
Think of yourself, I take it you are an educated person to pose such a question. You more than likely have many people cheering you on and helping you financially. You are expected to succeed.
Poor people are often ridiculed as being too good to follow in the footsteps of their family or neighborhood and picked on or worse.
See it is very difficult and people who break away are usually more grounded than those of us to it is expected.
They often make great leaders and truly know the struggles of people.

Answer 9

First of all where you live makes a large difference. If you live in one of the civilized first world nations then you do not really live in poverty.

Answer 10

You can take two different families with the same income and one family can be living in poverty and the other not. I think the differences come down to self respect, cleanliness, food choices, clothing choices and the general way people behave and live their lives. You can be a filthy slob who wrecks everything and throws trash around or you can care for your enviornment and your appearance. You can eat junk food and be fat, unhealthy and sick or you can eat healthily (for very cheaply) and be fit and healthy. You can be thrifty with your clothing choices or you can spend all of your money on "bling" and $200 sneakers. You can live and act in a respectful way to yourself, your family and others or you can act like an animal and raise your children to live like animals. You can also take seriously education---which is free here in NYC or you can not care about it and be stupid. It is all about choices. I see some very poor immigrants around where I live who are poor but not living in poverty and squalor and I see other people who are not new to this country living like pure animals so you be the judge.