 Margaret Thatcher, former UK Prime Minister, once said that poverty is a personality defect. She said this in an interview with the Catholic Herald. Huh. Catholic Herald. Makes sense. After all, Jesus himself said, Blessed are the poor, for they are defective. Now I can't speak as someone who's poor, but I can speak as someone with a defective personality. Teen drinking is very, very real, I gotta fake Adido. Which makes me living proof that one does not necessarily lead to the other. But am I the exception to the rule? There's heated debate over the cause of poverty. Do economic and social forces make people poor? Or are the poor themselves to blame? Does the system keep them down, or do the poor keep themselves down through laziness, wasteful spending, bad decisions, and their famously defective personalities? The reason people are permanently poor in the United States is not because they don't have money. It's because they suck with money. In the late 1950s, an anthropologist named Oscar Lewis was doing a research in poor neighborhoods, trying to figure out why so many of the families who lived there stayed poor from generation to generation. And he was like, maybe there's something to do with their behavior, their values, their beliefs. In other words, maybe it's the culture of the poor. And this he called the culture of poverty. As an idea, the culture of poverty went viral. It was on the lips of politicians, in the headlines of newspapers. And even all these decades later, the culture of poverty still gets talked about in the media and still has a big influence on how people think about poverty. But very often, people misunderstand Oscar Lewis's theory. Many believe he placed the original sin of poverty on the poor. He did not. He blamed outside forces such as economic and social injustice as the primary original cause of poverty. But Lewis believed that if people live in poverty for a long time, they develop a dysfunctional culture. And once that happens, they act in ways that tend to keep them stuck in poverty. The idea here is that poverty is psychologically harmful. And this harm can spread through entire communities. Lewis named several traits which he believed are part of the culture of poverty. They include feeling helpless, feeling inferior, dependency, present time orientation, lack of ambition, orality, orality. What does that mean? Let's look that up, shall we? 1. The quality of being spoken or verbally communicated. 2. The focusing of sexual energy and feeling on the mouth. What the fuck? Lewis, what kind of research did you do, bro? Sounds like you crossed some professional boundaries. Is it just me? Or does his smile seem creepy now? This seems like a good place to insert a mouth field joke, but so many people have done those by now. He's amazing! Amazing. Other scholars have pointed out that culture changes in response to new circumstances. They say that if poor people suddenly had access to well-paid jobs and new opportunities, the dysfunctional behavior would come to an end. Maybe not right away, but the change would gradually come. And Lewis agreed with this. In his own words, he said, How much weight is to be given to the internal, self-perpetuating factors in the subculture of poverty as compared to the external societal factors? My own position is that in the long run, the self-perpetuating factors are relatively minor and unimportant compared to the basic structures of the larger society. But what about Lewis' claim that the poor have deviant dysfunctional values? Many scholars have criticized him on this point. But who's right? Lewis or his critics? A good place to search for the answer is the book Tally's Corner by anthropologist Elliot Lebow. To research his book, Lebow hung out with, observed, and interviewed street corner men in a Washington, D.C. ghetto. These men were often unemployed, they didn't do anything to try to improve their situation, and they spent most of their time just hanging out together on the corner. They lived up to a lot of bad stereotypes about the poor. The sociologist Steven Steinberg has written an excellent summary of Lebow's research, so I'm going to quote from his book because I'm blazy and frankly he's a better writer than me. Lebow insists that the fundamental values of the street corner men are the same as those of the middle class society, and that their behavior, though in apparent contradiction to those values, is only a response to external circumstances that prevent them from living according to conventional values. So what were the external circumstances preventing these men from living according to their values? Lebow put it down to one major thing. They couldn't find jobs that pay a decent wage. Thus, if they do not plan for the future, it is not because they are observing a different cultural norm that emphasizes the pleasure of the moment, but because their futures are bleak and they lack the resources and opportunities for doing much about it. Similarly, their low aspirations are an inevitable response to restricted opportunity, particularly the improbability of finding a decent job. This is not a self-fulfilling prophecy but a resignation born out of bitter personal experience. All the men in Lebow's study had tested themselves repeatedly on the job market and had come to realize that the only jobs available were menial, low paying, dead-end jobs that would not allow them to support their families. Lebow says these men have a dual set of values, a sort of double consciousness. They believe in the mainstream values of working to support your family, but because they're unable to do so, they feel a deep sense of failure and shame. And so they turn towards the values of the street, values like being a tough guy and sleeping with a lot of women, because at least they have a chance of achieving those goals. Mainstream values they feel like a failure, a loser, the values of the street they experience a feeling of success. So, what's the main insight that Lebow wants us to know is that these street corner men and others like them would gladly live by mainstream values if they had the opportunity to do so, but for that they need decent paying jobs. This is so important to understand because it shows us that the culture of poverty is a symptom rather than a disease, an effect of poverty rather than a cause. To some extent it is a cause, but the whole thing is a cycle, and that cycle is mainly driven not by culture, but by economic and societal forces. This sounds reasonable, but even with this nuanced view, are we still putting too much blame on the poor? The term culture of poverty seems to imply that this is a culture that exists among all the poor, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what the original theory says. Let's consult Oscar Lewis. Among the US citizens officially certified as poor, I would guess that about 20% live in a culture of poverty. Now, as he says, this is just a guess, not based on data, and no actual data exists that I could find. But since Lewis studied this issue so closely, his guess is much better informed than most peoples. Leibow's research on the street corner men came to a similar conclusion. He made it clear that these men were not typical of men in the ghetto. They were the exception, not the rule, the minority, not the majority. So the culture of poverty to the extent that it does exist only exists among some of the poor. In 1989, a 23-year-old sociology grad student named Sadeer Venkatesh walked into Robert Taylor Holmes, one of Chicago's toughest housing projects. Everything about him stood out, his ponytail, his tie-dye shirt, his clipboard, his Indian ethnicity. The reason he'd come there was to do a research questionnaire with the residents. And the questions were so awkward, they were, like, carringingly comical. How does it feel to be black and poor? Very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good. The answer he got was laughter, followed by, fuck you. So yeah, it was an awkward beginning. But Venkatesh spent the next seven years hanging out in these housing projects, just like, chilling with people, getting to know them, and researching their economic activity. In the time since Sadeer Venkatesh did his research, the Robert Taylor Holmes have been torn down. But they used to be one of America's biggest ghettos, with an official joblessness rate of 96%. 96% jobless? You might imagine everyone sitting around doing nothing. The reality is, nearly everyone was hard at work in the underground economy. Some of them had jobs with legitimate businesses, but they got paid under the table, and others were more entrepreneurial. They had, like, their own thing going on. Anything from car repairs to home repairs, doing yard work to doing sex work, selling scrap metal to selling candy. And yeah, there was drug dealers, but that was just one type of business among many. These were off the books' jobs, so people got officially counted as unemployed, even though they worked. All of this was carefully documented by Sadeer Venkatesh in his research. He's now a sociology professor and author of several books, including one called Off the Books, the Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. And in this book, Venkatesh writes about Marquis Park, another Chicago ghetto, and just like in Robert Taylor Holmes, Marquis Park is bustling with off the books' economic activity. And even when someone doesn't have a paying job, they can still be very hardworking, like being a parent. Doesn't pay a dime, but it costs you your soul. Taking care of kids is difficult, tiring work. It's also vitally important work. I mean, children are the future. When a middle-class housewife stays home to take care of her kids, we don't consider her lazy. So why do people see a single parent on welfare this way? Actually, there's a very legitimate reason. It's called hypocritical bullshit. Thank you. Now, of course, there are lazy poor people. Just like there's lazy rich people. But as Venkatesh's research shows, the problem in poor communities is not laziness. The problem is that in these communities, and in some cases entire counties or cities, they're cut off, blocked off, and isolated from economic opportunity. And it's not just black ghettos. There are Latino ghettos, Native American ghettos, Asian ghettos, multiracial ghettos, and yes, white ghettos all facing the same. Have you ever watched that Will Smith movie, The Pursuit of Happiness? I did, and I liked it. But I also hated it. It's the true story of Chris Gardner, a totally broke, homeless single dad trying to make it in the business world. And he does. He achieves career success and wealth. And so, of course, the moral of the story is you see, even if you're a totally broke, homeless, black single parent, you can work your way to the top. From there, it's just one small step to saying poor people don't need help because there's no excuse for failure. If he can do it, why can't everyone else? Let's expose the ridiculousness of this with an analogy. Mugsy Bogues is the shortest NBA player in history, only 5'3". Now, imagine saying to some other guy who's 5'3". Oh my god, you mean you're not a professional basketball player? I mean, like, Mugsy Bogues did it? So, why not you? Frederick Douglass was born and raised a slave, but he escaped and became a best-selling author. Now, imagine going to a slave and saying, why aren't you a best-selling author? Oh, because you're a slave loser. Now, I realize these are extreme examples, but sometimes extreme examples are needed to make a point. There are amazing people able to overcome amazing odds, but these people are exceptional, exceptional ability, exceptional luck, exceptional inner strength to withstand failure after failure without losing confidence or hope. Most people just aren't going to be that exceptional. I mean, that's why they're called exceptions. So far in this video, I've been making a defense of the poor to prove that they deserve to not be poor, because they're so hardworking and have mainstream values. Well, what about the ones who get drunk, get high, get in fights, waste money on smokes and lottery tickets, have several kids, several baby mamas or baby daddies, haven't had a job in years? You know, those poor people. I've been saying that the reason the poor deserve to be lifted out of poverty, the reason they deserve better is because they live up to a particular standard, which implies that those who don't live up to that standard don't deserve better. I've fallen into an old trap of dividing the poor into deserving and undeserving. That's fucked up. Nobody should have to prove that they don't deserve poverty. Poverty isn't something that anyone deserves. Our argument that the poor don't deserve poverty shouldn't be based on their work habits, their values, anything. It should just be based on the fact that they're fucking human. That should be enough. Why isn't that enough? What gets called laziness is almost always something else, like depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, loss of hope, or self-confidence so low that it paralyzes you. Sometimes it's a refusal to accept jobs that are not only low-paying, but also micromanaged by bosses who emotionally abuse you and treat you like a slave. This isn't laziness, this is self-respect, it's dignity. Should it be punished with poverty or should it be admired? And even in cases where it is just plain laziness? So what? How barbaric are we that we treat a lack of work ethic as a crime? A crime to be punished by a life-sentence of poverty and all the suffering that poverty brings. Our world literally has enough resources and productive power to give every single person a good life. So how dare we justify depriving this of anyone? Hello. Before you go, I have a favor to ask you. The reason I do YouTube is because I want to make the world a better place. I know that's not unique, but I just hate how much suffering there is and I want a world where everyone's life can be good. I started my YouTube channel last year, but before that I actually spent many years writing scripts for videos. I have rough drafts for literally like a hundred videos on capitalism, alternatives to capitalism, revolution, building revolution, and organizing. The videos I've been making and will continue to make for a while are not these videos. Before I make these videos, I want my channel to grow in subscribers and views because I want these videos to reach beyond the leftist bubble. So to do this, I need your help. If you can, please tell people about my YouTube channel, share my videos online, and if you haven't already, subscribe and click the bell to get all notifications, liking and commenting help too. Thank you so much for your help and from deep within my heart, I wish you all the best for today and every day. Share the video comrades. As I say in Das Kapital, sharing is caring.