Most Americans have never seen mass poverty and do not understand that it is distinct from *specific* poverty.
In countries of mass poverty, nearly everyone is poor and living life close to the bone through no moral failing of their own. Opportunities for education, employment, and advancement may be virtually non-existent, while the absence of dams, flood control, water and sewage systems, electrical grids, good roads, vaccination, and adequate housing and food may mean life-changing disaster lies around every corner. Good people working hard simply cannot get ahead or even pull themselves out of misery.
In countries of specific poverty, grade school education is free and compulsory, libraries are open and free, caste systems are non-existent, water and sewage systems are robust, flood control and water storage are addressed by tax-payer funded public works, electrical grids are robust, roads are paved, vaccination is ubiquitous, and food shortages are non-existent. Here, crushing poverty may still have structural roots (racism in banking, real estate sales, zoning, public school financing, police enforcement), but there are ladders up and out that can be climbed to at least sustenance height if one is sufficiently imaginative, industrious, frugal, and cognizant of the dangers of moral hazard.
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