A Reaction to the Article Are Poor People Responsible for Their Own Poverty - Essay Example

Larzelere argues “Being poor was not a choice, it was a condition brought about by the people in power.” Upon examining the substance of their individual arguments at depth, I feel disposed to prefer the side that acknowledges the truth of poverty as perceived in reality where in general, due to a number of factors that influence our state of the economy, we may not plainly put the blame on the poor. Even if the poor may, to a certain extent, be observed weak in the ability to improve themselves in terms of economy, we ought to understand that they do not merely struggle with the financial aspect of living.

Poor people find it difficult to gain inspiration from a depressed environment they dwell in for evidently, the strong presence of vices, crimes, violence, and other elements that threaten to ruin or degrade the quality of life in a society bears negative impact in their attitude toward personal growth. Moreover, we may not have them take the sole accountability of neglecting to live with decent income and shelter for most of them are either those uneducated or those who receive but an inadequate amount of formal learning so that they barely have a proper way of determining suitable professional careers or of simply employing themselves to be resourceful and persevering in finding work that matches one’s set of skills.

Jensen accuses the poor of being lazy, irresponsible, and unable to handle money and the tasks of every day yet on suggesting to remedy this situation “By developing work ethics and feeling some sense of pride and ownership of the money”, we may with high-pitched voice collectively ask, in return, how? How are these less fortunate citizens able to manage at least knowing what ‘work ethics’ is about if they do not have work in the first place and how can they be proud of monetary possession if the little money they have is immediately spent on basic necessities and nothing remains to be saved for the comfort of future living?

Larzelere appears as rather one-sided in suspecting ‘people in power’ when it comes to the matter of significant control over the poor which keeps the latter from advancing to a higher level of self-net worth. I agree, however, to the writer’s biased stand because, in view of the actual occurrences, it seems more reasonable to catch red-handed those who are corrupt in their acquisition of considerable wages with tax anomalies than those who are paying taxes delinquently on the ground of working in an irregular basis.