How can poverty have positive functions for society?

Question

Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

It can teach how to live with less. How to stretch the dollar. How to improvise. How not to be a slave to fashion. How to shift priorities from toys such as iPods, cells phones and such to what exactly do you really need.

Answer 2

Poverty serves no positive function for society, indeed, it impairs the well being of all. Poverty is the result of the inability to produce goods and services desirable by others in an amount of time acceptable to others. The determinants in the United States are wage restriction laws such as the minimum wage or in some states the requirement that if there is a union all must be in the union, and education. Education is the primary determinant but it certainly isn't a sole determinant. In the United States, each year of education past the sixth grade results in an 8-12% geometric increase in pay per year.

It even functions to keep the rich less rich. If a rich person could hire a highly productive person at a very high wage or a low wage person who is not very productive, they would always choose the highly productive person as it makes their capital investment more valuable. High wages are paid because the person they are paid to cause invested capital to be worth more than without them. Of course, if you could only hire very high wage workers then little work would get done. You work with the labor pool you are given.

Answer 3

No function. And it's not like the singing of birds, either, which has no function, but is simply part of life. Poverty is unnatural, there is simply no reason for it, particularly in this day and age.
But in a cynical sense, poverty can only have 'positive functions' in society because it's a comparative measure of how much more money a person has than someone who is poor. That way, the person who is financially better off can feel smug, or else always terrified that they will 'wind up like that person who lives in complete poverty'...
Poverty makes many people stay on their toes, afraid to take chances in career because they don't want to be a charity case...unsure when they will eat next, and without a home. Poverty has become a fear, and when you have such fears in society, people become awfully easy to manipulate and control.

Answer 4

Poverty can be seen as positive as without it people would have nothing to strive for. Without poverty and lower classes then we would live in an Utopian society. If we lived in a Utopia, then people would become lazy and not work hard in life. It is the reason why communist governments don't work. No one would spend years in school to become a doctor or a lawyer, if they could make the same amount of money driving buses or as garbage men.

Answer 5

yeah tinman is right and also you learn about desperate and what it means to have a place to live with food on the table instead of eating your ribs with a lil sauce on there and not even considering for a split second that you just ate

Answer 6

It forces people to get their priorities straight. Also, too many people cover up their problems with material things!! I learned with no money, that I was forced to solve my own family problems and not hide behind money and things (like my other family members!).
And lastly, it forces people to search for God (like how my cat comes and gets me when her food bowl is empty!)
Yes, there are positives.

Answer 7

The middle class is on the endangered species list.