One's poverty is the fault of the individual

There is a problem that refuses to go away, even in the most affluent of times - the fact that a considerable amount of poverty exists in the midst of plenty. It has always been this way in this country (USA). It is not the fault of the individual. Poverty is one of the unfortunate consequences of a capitalist system. The tendency of capital to accumulate in the hands of a few has long been of concern in the USA. Our government has introduced various measures designed to keep this "accumulation factor" under control: antitrust legislation. Also, the graduated income tax has attempted to take a greater proportion of annual income from those who make considerable profit, and the welfare system has tried to redistribute monies to the disadvantaged poor. For the most part, these attempts have failed to eliminate poverty. Why? One reason is technological improvements. By their very nature, many technological improvments put a lot of people out of work and catapult them into poverty. Cast your imagination back some 80 years ago and consider the advent of the tractor. On the surface, this technological advancement seems such a blessing. It makes the cultivation of land and the planting of crops easier. It is an invention that can do the work of 100 people. That is just the point. What happens, after coming of the tractor, to the people who used to earn their living by selling their labor to farm owners in exchange for a place to live and some of the crops they produced? They get pushed off the land when the tractor arrives and fall into desperate poverty. Nor is it easy for these people to find other work. All of their lives they farmed the land by hand and have no other training. For middle-aged and older members it is almost impossible to change . What do they do? They may pack up and take to relocating to find other work. To California, for example. Sure, California; there they have heard there is lots of work available. It is California, the land where everyone gets rich. There problems will be over, so they move to California. Trouble is, hundreds of thousands have the same idea. Hence, when they get to California competion is keen for a very limited number of jobs. Employers, knowing they have a "sellers market," can offer extremely low wages and be assured that the desperate newcomers will have to take them. The poverty and its attendant misery is perpetuated. This is the story of the "Okies," the farmers thrown out of work by the tractor in the 1930's. Their fate and the enormous difficulty they had fighting it is poignantly portrayed in John Steinbeck's classic novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." This is just one specific historical example. Today, technological advancements that seem to be unvieled on a regular basis have the same effect, albeit on a smaller scale, as the tractor. Going out and getting an education, even if it was just that simple as Kleptin suggests, takes years and is not a practical answer to an individual's situation. OK, I'll just go out and study to be a lawyer, while I am living in poverty, with three children, while my rent and all my expenses are put on hold for the ensuing years; then I will emerge from this situation no longer poor. After all it was my fault, anyway. His argument is not pragmatic.