Margaret Thatcher called poverty a “personality defect”. Ben Shapiro says people are poor because “they suck with money.” A research-backed response to all those who blame poverty on the poor. In a world with enough for all, poverty is never justified.
This video is 16 minutes and is divided into five parts. Further description below video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k3DkEY0YHU
[youtube]6k3DkEY0YHU[/youtube]
Part 1: Discusses the “culture of poverty” (or the “subculture of poverty” as it was originally called by anthropologist Oscar Lewis), the theory that the poor have various dysfunctional traits which play a significant part in causing intergenerational cycles of poverty. But to what extent is “the culture of poverty” an effect of poverty rather than a cause?
Part 2: Looks at how common (or uncommon) the culture of poverty is among the poor.
Part 3: Tackles the question of whether the non-employed poor are lazy / lacking in work ethic.
Part 4: The media likes to popularize true stories of people who overcome incredible obstacles to escape poverty. But these stories are held up not simply as inspirational examples, but to promote the idea that with enough hard work and determination, anyone can escape poverty, and therefore those who don’t have only themselves to blame. Part 4 challenges this notion.
Part 5: When people make the case for why poor people don’t deserve to be poor, we often focus on trying to show that the poor are every bit as hard working and conventional in their values as the middle class – just as I’ve tried to do in this video. In Part 5, I talk about why this is the wrong focus for the argument.
Leave me a comment telling me your thoughts on this video. Constructive criticism is welcome.
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