You should never argue with a crazy mi mi mi mi mi mind

I recently let myself get into an argument with someone over the causes of poverty in America. The song and dance I had to listen to was that the poor brought poverty on themselves and were wholly to blame for their situation: anyone in America who worked hard enough and was willing to sacrifice could be middle class. ("The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor." John Kenneth Galbraith.) The logical conclusion was that the poor deserved their own plight.

My reaction is that anyone who could reduce something as complicated as causes of poverty to a few sentences or was willing to pigeonhole some 46 million people had a tenuous grasp of reality at best.

To give the sociological analysis of poverty would require many volumes. So here's two short responses to the idea that people get what they deserve. The first is Ecclesiastes:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

The second is Clint Eastwood: