Interesting life experience. However, I think you will agree that being lazy in the sense you describe is a trait of most humans, rich or poor. Non-poor people

Interesting life experience. However, I think you will agree that being lazy in the sense you describe is a trait of most humans, rich or poor. Non-poor people are just conditioned by their social environment to study, get a degree, etc. instead of not to. Many successful people would have been poor if they were born in your situation, because they don't have the personality or guts to go against peer pressure. And many of the poor Uzbek people you mention would probably have been successful if they had been born in a social environment where people were highly qualified and studied. Taking this into account, I can agree that it's possible to get out of poverty, but I don't think one can say being poor is poor people's fault.