Nelson Mandela

Oh dear.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who
have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will
overcome it.

If you start out with such a misdiagnosis you’ll never be able to offer the right treatment.

Poverty is, how ever much we wish it wasn’t, the natural state of mankind. It is the starting point, not something that is created at all, it’s something that is there before we start to try and do anything.

The thing that is created is wealth, not poverty. What we need to study is not how poverty is created, for that is what is there already, but how wealth is created, which is the different and interesting thing.

4 responses

  1. There are also those who think nuclear fission, or even nuclear fusion, isn’t natural.
    What colour is the sky in their world?

  2. Black. Duh.

  3. I’m not sure you’re right here: the whole concept of poverty obviously doesn’t exist until someone, somewhere (whether the King of your tribe or some other tribe or whatever) has more stuff than everyone else.

  4. Does God want you to be rich?

    Attended a talk by a preacher on that subject on Friday morning. I don’t know the answer to the question, nor do I know the answer to the larger question: Does God want us to be happy? However, I suspect larger issues than these preoccupy God.

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