The Way We Look at Poverty



I agree with Steven Pinker's claim that poverty being a default state, not wealth. But because of societal norms and prejudices, we put so much blame on people in poverty. Of course there are people who are in that situation for the reasons they created (i.e. it is their fault). Despite that, I believe that there are far more people who are poor because they were not able to create wealth. Their circumstances might have not let them. The amount of energy they need to spend to pull themselves out of poverty is much larger than for a wealthy person to further aggregate their wealth. If you think really hard about it, how does one create something from nothing? And why is the society so unforgiving towards the poor and generous to the wealthy?
People including myself are primed to think that way and now I see how powerful propaganda is. The reason the oligarchs try so hard to hold onto the mass media is that it is extremely potent and excellent at making people believe what they want them to believe. Regular people busy with their regular activities will not spend much time looking into such effect (I'm not trying to say I'm special but merely pointing out deliberate ignorance). In consequence they think like others and thinks in a way that the media wants them to do so. So, over a long period of time, they (including myself to some extent, for I'm not aware of all propaganda), are doing themselves a disfavor by either not investing enough effort or refusing to see the layer underneath the belief of media.

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