Genuine Question: Why do people stay poor?

[Denilson-The-Comeback]

Having recently been called racist

Yes by me and I suspect that you are.

because I honestly think people more often than not choose their own poverty.

No you don't. Not deep down.

About half the world’s 7 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day.

Buying a computer or being an inventor or business whizz to them would be like you trying to buy a Bugatti Veyron. Access to knowledge and education on this planet is very limited.

It might seem widely available because you were born in the USA so that’s all you know but if you were born in rural Burma or rural Angola you’d find your options for learning and bettering yourself to be extremely limited.

There is virtually no social mobility in many countries. You're either born into wealth through luck or you are born into the majority of impoverished people and will remain stuck there for life.

I thought I would put the question out there as an open question.

You repeating yourself. You started a topic with a question and now again your saying "I'm gonna start this topic with a question"

I really struggle with this question as I have been as poor as anybody on this forum.

You think Bill Gates just worked hard ?

Everyone from Bill Gates to Warren Buffett needed a substantial amount of money to start up their companies. The founder of facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) attended two of the most expensive and prestigious schools in the USA (Harvard, Phillips Exeter Academy). Donald Trump inherited a couple hundred million dollars worth of assets from his daddy.

Most wealth is inherited and their success was due to their parents bank account, connections and a bit a luck but had little to do with their intelligence and hard work.

Steve Jobs (Apple Founder) was just another tech CEO. If Steve Jobs was not put up for adoption and his father returned with him back to Syria, then Steve Jobs today would have be some 60 something year old man in Syria named Mr Jandali. Maybe he would be Dr Jandali, but it is highly unlikely he would founded one of the world’s top computer companies.

Take the average drug dealer born in the ghetto. They could easily become a fortune five hundred CEO. The same type of person that has the personality and skills to run a criminal entrepreneurship can easily run a legal one, but many will never have the opportunity that will allow them to earn the credentials necessary to do so. Simply because of where they were born in life.

I have seen the recklessness and laziness of parents. I have been in very disadvantaged positions as a child. It was very obvious that my parents were either lazy or wasteful.

Stevie Wonder is a millionaire but his money does not disprove the fact that it's an advantage to have your eyesight.

You might have grew up living in the mud, without a biscuit (and even then I kinda doubt that) but you were still white as was your family.

So, in your case the proper test of your racial privilege would be to compare poor whites in the region you grew up, with poor blacks in the same region or state and to then ask, did whites have an advantage ?

In those competitions race matters.

You were not competing against Oprah or Micheal Jordan. You were competing (if you even lived around blk ppl and I doubt that) with other poor black folk and that's were race matters because black workers are the first fired in an economic downturn and remain more likely to be unemployed.

Perhaps white Americans should move to a reservation, or a district where impoverished Black people live, and continue talking about how ‘unfair ‘and ‘oppressive’ it is to be white.

I was really bad with money as a young adult too having never really been taught how to respect it, but from a relatively young age I knew the importance of saving, of working hard, of upgrading a skill set and in turn have always seemed to do okay. I am just not sure what people are spending their money on to be poor all the time. Or why they are not moving to new towns. Or learning new skills.

Remember you are white and you were seen as white by your teachers, by employers, by doctors, by everyone. So as you were coming up you reaped the benefits of presumed whiteness :

The presumptions of competence
The presumptions of law-abidingness
The presumptions of general intelligence

None of these thing black people attending school can assume others will presume about us

So yes you may have worked hard but at every turn, your hard work was met with an access to an opportunity structure to which black people are more likely to have been denied.

I mean, I earn a pretty average income, nothing special going on. I think I bought a new TV about 8 years ago. The same old couch sits across from me. I can only assume a lot of people are trying to keep up with the Jones family across from them as personal debt levels are high here. All you do really is pay the bills, buy some food, the occasional replacement clothing, some fuel, some books and you are set. I get that bad things happen too and they do to me also. But insurance is not expensive, covering your health each month is only a single night out sacrificed.

Look - White privilege at it's most basic level is the privilege of having one less thing to worry about in life.

Don't get it twisted

Everyone has problems but for whites ? Dealing with systematic racism is not an issue.

I think it's grotesque and monumentally repugnant of white ppl who want to own victim-hood whilst being steeped in white privilege and patronizingly conflate their specific white ethnic problems within white dominance and project that onto black people and foist upon the very people (Black people) who have absolutely nothing to do with any past stuff that they may have had to deal with.

And then you try to equate your history as similar to that of black history, thereby relinquishing any culpability emanating from their own oppression/racism of black people all the while enjoying the ill-gotten fruits of white superiority.

Genius !! (lol)

Why don't you direct your complaints of ‘poor white oppression’ to you fellow white Anglo-Saxon brethren ?

Black people have never oppressed poor whites.

You have the nerve to sit there trying to garner sympathy whilst exonerating yourself of racism, from the very people (Black people) whom white supremacists oppress and continue to do so
.