Poverty and economic inequality are multidimensional, chronic, and debilitating systemic problems. While they are the products of deliberate economic policies made by those in power, they are often falsely treated as the personal failings of individuals within an otherwise healthy system. Poverty describes the inability to meet basic food, clothing, and shelter needs, while economic inequality describes the larger pattern of a persistent unequal distribution of wealth within a society or country. Those suffering from poverty or economic inequality are at a perpetual disadvantage to improve their economic stability due to the limited or unjust environmental, educational, judicial, and healthcare resources that are the intended or unintended consequences of political decisions.
It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
