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by M. L. Larzelere

Created on: January 22, 2010   Last Updated: January 31, 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. People lucky enough to be born into an Egyptian Dynasty never had to worry about their next meal, but their slaves did. “Legal rights, responsibilities, and status were divided along class lines rather than gender lines.”  Those not born into favorable conditions may have spent their time in do menial work for little pay poverty. Consequently, few people ever had the means to escape the poverty level.  Another example is the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks had a society that instilled very specific roles for men, women, and children. Most Greeks were farmers and many Greek families had slaves. The better to do the Greek, the more slaves he had.   The Romans had a two-tiered society, the upper class called Patricians and the lower class called Plebeians. The Romans also had slaves.

While my research was not completely exhaustive, I found no written record from these ancient cultures that demonstrate  the poor chose this way of life. I must also add, I found no records of the upper class society stating they did not want to be poor. In many of these ancient societies, the people believed one’s station in life was the will of the gods.

Moving ahead a thousand years, society still consists of those who have and those who do not. People who lived under the realm of the King and Queen, fared much better than those outside the influence of the noble class did. Some people saw the injustice displayed by the nobility, which led to the famous Magna Carta. Even so, poverty remained rampant.

Moving ahead another seven hundred years, we begin to see a change values. A new concept is born. The idea that people have rights, rights no person can take away because these rights are inalienable, meaning they were given to us by God. However even these rights were conditional, God gave these rights to white men only. People of color, Indians and women did not fall into this category, thus had to live in squalor or in the conditions prescribed by those white men in power.  Native Americans chose the life of a reservation rather than fight a losing battle against a Government with an increase in power and the will to use it. These people lived off the land while succumbing to the desires of those in power. Being poor was not a choice, it was a condition brought about by the people in power. The people in power had a means and the ways to control those less fortunate and less able to change their conditions.

Moving ahead less than one hundred years, we see several revolutions going on at the same time. Skilled workers begin to revolt against the owners and management demanding better working conditions and better pay. Activists work to abolish slavery, creating an “underground railroad’ to help slaves escape to their freedom.  One group of people believed they had the right to have slaves, while another group believed the condition of slavery was wrong and no one has the right to own another human being. As a result, a civil war broke out and the side that believed slavery was wrong won.  However, this created a new class of poor people that has plagued this society onto this day.

Freeing slaves may have caused a new class of poor but one could easily argue it did not perpetuate such a class. For the next hundred years or so, the poor especially blacks and women  had to fight to climb the ladder of success. Every successful step came with a deep-rooted struggle. People had to unite often-forming unions to get better working conditions, better pay, and insurance to protect them from injury on the job. The unions enabled people to move out of the clutches of poverty and into a better living condition known as the middle class.

The middle class is a modern day phenomenon brought about by people who were determined that those who have wealth should distribute the wealth much more equitably. Logic should tell us that one does not come by wealth in a vacuum. People obtain wealth by manipulating those around them. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Carnegie, George Bush Sr. Some, people like Hearst, gained wealth as much by luck, as by circumstance.

 So, let me expel the myth that people who live at the poverty level do so by choice. Many of these people work, often two and sometimes three jobs; all at wage jobs in fast food restaurants, or as clerks in food chain stores, clothing stores, and gas stations. Most of these businesses make a hefty profit for the owners, and investors, yet not enough to pay their workers a decent living wage. Another myth states, if these people really wanted to move out of the poverty level they would find the means to do it. I teach at a private college. The students I teach are those who have lost their jobs and are going through career changes or job retraining. Some students I teach failed the entrance exam. My role is to help these students learn to read and write at the college level, so that they can perform on the job. The sad part is some of these people will never be able to perform at the college level. The reading and writing is much too technical for them to comprehend. As sorry as we feel for this group of people, we do them a greater disservice by telling them to go to college. Granted, some of these people may be able to go to a technical school or trade school, but even these schools often have skill levels that require extensive training that these people may never be able to master. The skilled craft people are not called  masters because the job they do is so easy anybody can do it. Often these jobs require a talent and an art that requires extensive training. Just about anybody can drive a nail into a piece of wood, but it takes a very skilled finish carpenter to build a winding staircase in an upscale home.  Many of these skilled jobs have gone by the wayside due to automation and technology.

I wonder if the people who claim the poor choose to live in poverty include the people who suffer from mental illnesses, cognitive impairments, and physical handicaps that limit their capacities to work. Just as our country has created a new poor, several times over, it has also created the forgotten poor in the mentally ill. I would venture a guess that many of the homeless people would qualify for medical treatment for a mental illness.

The poor have always been with us. Being poor, living in poverty, may seem like a choice, but I believe no self respecting person would want to live in the condition  so many poor people live in day in and day out.  Often times the difference between those above the poverty lines and those below it are being in the right place at the right time and having the means to take advantage of it.  Class struggle is a constant battle. “For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.” Karl Marx. I submit that for the bureaucrat the poor are merely puppets, marionettes to do their bidding then toss them off when they are no longer needed.

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