Why some people are poor - Henry Hazlitt

Throughout history, until about the middle of the 18th century, mass poverty was nearly everywhere the normal condition of man. Then capital accumulation and a series of major inventions ushered in the Industrial Revolution. In spite of occasional setbacks, economic progress became accelerative. Today, in the United States, in Canada, in nearly all of Europe, in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, mass poverty has been practically eliminated. It has either been conquered or is in process of being conquered by a progressive capitalism. Mass poverty is still found in most of Latin America, most of Asia, and most of Africa.

Yet even the United States, the most affluent of all countries, continues to be plagued by "pockets" of poverty and by individual poverty.

Temporary pockets of poverty, or of distress, are an almost necessary result of a free competitive enterprise system. In such a system some firms and industries are growing or being born, others are shrinking or dying; and many entrepreneurs and workers in the dying industries are unwilling or unable to change their residence or their occupation. Pockets of poverty may be the result of a failure to meet domestic or foreign competition, of a shrinkage or disappearance of demand for some product, of mines or wells that have been exhausted, of land that has become a dust bowl, and of droughts, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. There is no way of preventing most of these contingencies, and no all encompassing cure for them. Each is likely to call for its own special measures of alleviation or adjustment. Whatever general measures may be advisable can best be considered as part of the broader problem of individual poverty.

This problem is nearly always referred to by socialists as "the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty." The implication of the phrase is not only that such poverty is inexcusable, but that its existence must be the fault of those who have the "plenty." We are most likely to see the problem clearly, however, if we stop blaming "society" in advance and seek an unemotional analysis.

The real problem of poverty is not a problem of "distribution" but of production. The poor are poor not because something is being withheld from them, but because, for whatever reason, they are not producing enough.