RichardY Posted April 7, 2016 Posted April 7, 2016 What is Poverty? Is Poverty the Google definition of being extremely Poor? Or is Poverty a lack of knowledge? Or something else? Is Poverty a Relative Concept?
Cuffy_Meigs Posted April 7, 2016 Posted April 7, 2016 It seems to me that the word now has so many different meanings, depending on who is using it and in which context, that its descriptive power is almost zero without further exposition. There may be a base on which we could all agree - something like 'lacking the physical resources to sustain life' - but beyond that, take your pick. 2
Mister Mister Posted April 7, 2016 Posted April 7, 2016 Good question! Poverty is certainly relative - the definition seems to increase every year, in part to justify massive welfare programs I assume. Also the difference between poverty in first and third world countries is very significant - most poor people in America today have at least one car, a phone, internet, air conditioning, and so on. Also, many of them are obese so...make of that what you will. Poverty in the third world is associated with malnourishment, disease, and a whole host of other unimaginably horrible conditions that people in the third world, for the most part, don't experience. As a larger answer to your question, poverty in my opinion is not just a lack of stuff, but often a lack of intellectual and social capital (I like the term "cultural capital" used by Shelby Steele). It is correlated with low IQ, violent or otherwise authoritarian parenting styles, and with cultures that have a certain toxic mentality: collectivist, mystical, anti-intellectual, anti-capitalist, and so on. Often one of the greatest struggles for a person with skills and ambitions, to get out of poverty, is not some vertical institutionalized oppression, but the horizontal attacks of one's peers, who don't want to see one of their own achieve excellence. Or can only tolerate him/her using those skills to benefit the group in some way. The recent call in show "The Black Man's Burden" had a caller in this very situation and was very illuminating.
RichardY Posted April 8, 2016 Author Posted April 8, 2016 Good question! Poverty is certainly relative Interesting, I would have said Poverty is an absolute or an effect of an action, maybe even a feeling. Thinking of the film Slumdog Millionaire about a boy who grows up in the slums in India, he perhaps doesn't think that he is in poverty because having been born and grown up in the slums that is what he knows. As another example, pre Roman Europe, I wonder if the Celts felt they were impoverished, perhaps life was brutal and short with limited technology, but being in almost a state of nature, famine and illness were to be expected. Thinking of the story of the Buddha, coming out of his palace to him the people would seem poor, but would they be seen as in poverty?
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