> I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor. > If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have l

> I suspect it’s not so much a matter of being poor, but allowing the possibility of being poor. > If you do not have the freedom to fail, then you also have less opportunity to succeed. Interesting hypothesis. I have a counter-hypothesis: it is not good if people can die due to poor choices. It's not good if they can get so poor they can't escape and improve their lives. It's not good if wealth is concentrated, because this leads to worse quality of life for most people. On the contrary: you have to give people an opportunity to improve if you want them to improve, and the only way to do this is to support them so they aren't destined to stay poor. All of these observations seem to be both obvious and historically grounded. Do you have any counter-arguments beyond your initial hypothesis? > So, what happens when social security fails and nobody had retirement income? That’s the kind of problem that small scale poverty helps avoid. Otherwise we have a communal tendency to kick the can down the road until the problem becomes insurmountable. Then why are there so many more poor people in the US compared to the EU? Shouldn't the US need a smaller amount of poverty for their system to function well? Why does reality not seem to line up with your hypothesis?