Poverty and wealth are both primarily consequences rather than causes. It's very easy to confuse the direction of the arrow of causation though. And of course I

Poverty and wealth are both primarily consequences rather than causes. It's very easy to confuse the direction of the arrow of causation though. And of course I say primarily because there are feedback loops that muddy the picture a bit. Saying wealth is a predictor of success is like saying success is a predictor of success. You're not wrong, but it's not a very interesting statement. And I don't know about you, but the nerds at my school didn't waste their time on pointless crap like learning to pretend to do physics while not using calculus (preferring to do the bare minimum to get adequate grades) and instead poured their passion into things like sports, playing chess and magic, and teaching themselves how to program.