It is the systems, not the people, that require reform

Judging and blaming the poor for their lack is a preposterous and ignorant attempt at diversion from the real source of poverty. It is a diversion from the scrutiny of flawed socioeconomic designs which are a product of human thinking. Poverty is not an accident neither are poor people lazy nor irresponsible nor averse to work; poverty is an outcome of economic and social designs that promote and justify gluttony and greed while dehumanising the poor.

Everybody knows what and who creates poverty, but none is willing to confront the powerful beneficiaries of the design. Instead, a pacification narrative is being advanced to the poor, so they see themselves not as an exploited working-class but as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires. The suggestion is that the route to the abundance of riches is open and equally accessible to everyone willing to take the necessary steps, and that the poor’s poverty is a normal phase before self-actualisation.

People are socially engineered to take the exceptional so-called ‘rags to riches’ cases as the norm, not the exception that they truly are. The few individuals who manage to circumvent the barriers embedded in the system design do not constitute the norm, they are an exception and so are their pathways which is the reason the guardians of the status quo often resist the pressure to incorporate these pathways into the existing design so every poor person can follow and breakaway from poverty.

Falsely making rarities the norm is a harmful narrative that desensitises society to poverty and shifts the burden of responsibility for poverty away from systems onto the poor. It ignores the foundational injustices of our economic and social designs; foundations whose thrust is oppression of certain population groups and make it impossible for the poor to break the cycle of poverty. These systems are not the design of the working-class, but of the elite, and the working class are only tools to be used.

Addressing poverty requires character and determination to be objective, both on the causes and solutions to it. First, acknowledge that poverty is not created and sustained by the poor person, but it is imposed on the poor by the economic and social systems designed by human beings. We have designed systems that continually add more to the abundance of those with plenty while limiting access to resources to those who have too little.

Consider the various unjust tax systems that disproportionately burden low-income groups while favouring higher earners or the wage suppression and increasing income inequality or decline in real wages and the decline of purchasing power for workers or decline in secure jobs since the 1970s or the location of industrial estates and waste disposal sites in working-class zones or lack of investment in infrastructure in working-class communities, you will understand the moral abhorrence of shifting the problem of poverty on the poor.

Society must address the multifactorial intertwined systemic issues that perpetuate poverty including some highlighted above, economic inequality, unemployment, lack of access to education and healthcare, lack of fair legal representation, conflict, climate change and discrimination.  

Eradicating poverty requires that responsibility for poverty is borne by the system design; we must reform the system, not the poor person. Focus must not be on driving the poor person out of poverty as though they foolishly walked into it, but it must be directed at driving out causes of poverty from communities. Poverty is a product of human design so only people, through system reforms, can get rid of it.

This can only be achieved by reforming our economic and social pathways not only to create wealth but to be equally effective in eradicating poverty in society. The goal must be to create a transparent system that allows for the actualisation of individual and community dreams, normalises creating wealth and scorns poverty; poverty must be a scandal to the system design, not its victims.

It is essential that we invest and cultivate human moral impulses so there is humanity in those with plenty. We must not be comfortable in building tall security walls around affluent estates so their residents cannot see the misery of the poverty in the next estate, but society must be transparent and touched enough to actively engage in designing systems that do not only raise communities off the ground but let them grow wings to fly.

Shaming the poor for poverty is not only dishonesty, but also moral bankruptcy. Instead of attempting to understand causes of poverty from both the poor person’s lived experience and interrogating system designs, society is quick to make assumptions about the person. We quickly assume that there’s a step in the process to riches that they did not follow. This frees us to judge their character, rather than their circumstance; we conveniently ignore the socioeconomic structures that perpetuate poverty.