Why Poverty?

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“You will always have the poor with you.”

Before I sat down to write this post, I spent a lot of time thinking, asking questions and doing research on the “whys” of poverty.  Most of what I read, heard or saw made me angry.

When you think about it, we are living in the most advanced times (medical, technological and intellectual prowess) in human history and we still cannot find a way to take care of the basic needs of people.

This does not make sense to me. There is nothing that can rightly justify poverty, but I will speculate on my reasons of why we will always have the poor with us.

Our own foolish choices.

I handle most problems by focusing on the root of an issue, not the symptom, and I find myself in the Garden of Eden, the once home of Adam and Eve.

From my reading of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were provided with a place to live, plenty of food to eat and they lacked nothing. It wasn’t until after their choosing to disobey that this sentence was handed down:

To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life… Genesis 3:16-17, 19.  In my eyes, this is when Adam and Eve (and future mankind) became poor.    They went from having all of their needs being met to being dismissed from their home and having to provide for themselves.

I guess I could compare this relationship to that of a parent and child.  As minors, when we are under our parents roof and rules, we experience a certain amount of  protection or benefits.   When we remove ourselves from under their guidance and experience, well woe.   Sometimes because of choices we make, we experience poverty at our own hands.

Another reason why I think poverty exists today is because there will always be someone to take advantage of poor people.

We can look at the current worldwide economic  situation and see the effects of greed and corruption.

If you live in an urban community you might see check cashing centers, pay-day loans, lottery, rent-to-own and pawn shops sprinkled throughout the neighborhood.  The interest rate and penalties alone for doing business at such place are oppressive enough.  These places prey on the misfortunes of the poor and are bleeding people to the point of desperation and hopelessness!

For thousands of years, mankind has, through many efforts (FreeRice.com, EndPovertyBlog.org and United National General Assembly, etc.) tried to win the war on poverty but have been unsuccessful.  Do you see any hope to the end of poverty? Will the poor always be with us? If you haven’t blogged about poverty on your blog, please share your views or  solutions to this growing problem. Since this post is a part of Blog Action Day, I will not be responding to the comments, but I will leave the comment section open should you care to leave one.  Thanks for reading.

Photo 1 by azem
Photo 2 by neweldorado