Poverty seems to be more and more a result of pure and simple exploitation.
1/
When a company is profitable, but the profit margin is considered “not high enough”, so employees are laid off or given reduced hours (or as seems to be common practice, benefited, experienced employees are laid off, then replaced with part-time employees at a lower wage and no benefits) so that the stock dividends can stay high and executives get hefty bonuses (because profits are high), how is that a moral failing, or even bad luck, on the part of the worker?
2/
I’ve read enough Dickens to think this was also the case in his time, and well he knew it. See Ignorance and Want tucked under the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present.
It’s amazing how much “moral failing” is the result of poverty, rather than the other way around.
3/
I do find it encouraging that from time to time I am seeing comments to the effect that poverty and the inability of the poor to access things like food, shelter and healthcare without government assistance (or at all) is more an indictment of our society as a whole, rather than of the poor themselves. When a “successful” company has full-time employees who cannot support themselves, how successful are they really?
fin
Rather than 'society as a whole' I'd prefer -that whichever of America's current 735 Billionaires are involved - be named and their accountability (via tracked business practices) be specified.
Accountability for their actions will only take place when individuals involved are NAMED.
Rather than those involved supporting their