Week-09 Response: Addressing Extreme Proverty

What is the root cause of poverty? How much responsibility should society take for such individual circumstances?
By: @dbruce

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I believe that there is no singular cause to poverty or to a person becoming impoverished. There is a spectrum of things that could cause it: mental illness, injury, economic downfall, personal relationships, bad investments, born into it, the list goes on and on. While there is no singular reason a person becomes impoverished, I do believe there is a large group of people that are theoretically forced to stay impoverished. This is due to the fact that our economic system thrives off of debtors or people willing to work unreasonably low wages for gruesome work. This group of low-class workers and even though suffering from homelessness are never given equal opportunity to improve their lives despite that society claims they are just lazy or drug addicts. As a whole, I do not believe society should take responsibility for an individual's circumstance, I believe that society should want to, out of the goodness of their hearts, help their neighbors and fellow citizens to have the best life they can. If we as a society taught the importance and value of helping those around us, we would begin to see a generalized increase in life and situation for all citizens in a country, not just those who are impoverished. We as a society should realize that we all fall on rough times and need assistance because not everyone has a supportive family or friends that can aid them, but instead, a friendly stranger can sometimes make a world of difference. However, no matter what we do there will always be a person at the bottom of the economic pyramid, but as a human being, they deserve all the basic necessities to survive. That is the sole responsibility of society because we as people cannot wait for the government to solve poverty when they themselves benefit from it.