Poverty as oppression in America is a direct result of the economic mandates and tendencies of capitalism. A capitalistic economy is inherently impersonal and concerned exclusively with profit. In the ubiquitous drive for profit, oppression becomes the relationship between workers and employers as employers try to maximize profits by minimizing wages. Thus the primary cause for poverty amidst the working class is oppression. Not only does capitalism require a marginal labor force of the unemployed to depress wages, but recently it has shown its need to eliminate employees and produce internationally to reduce costs.
Competitive capitalism demands a definite level of unemployment to reduce wages.
A base level of unemployed workers increases the demand for lower level jobs. The irony is very interesting. Capitalism as an economic force took away the worker's pre-industrial ownership of the means of production. The advent of industrial capitalism ended the system of craftsmanship and divorced the worker from the means of production. This left workers with only one asset to sell - their labor power.