Adilene Martinez Social and Political Essay

Poverty a Social Political Issue



Poverty is a social problem because its effects are felt in society as a whole. For example if you examine most of the crimes - with the exception of the so called white collar crimes - most of them are committed by those who are from extremely underprivileged backgrounds. If you have a problem in society that is causing huge amounts of problems and costing billions of pounds/dollars per an-nun then it's a problem that affects all. Therefore collectively it is a problem because it costs the taxpaying public.

The two arguments on poverty are usually like this: A: The people, who are poor, are poor because they are lazy, or they do not spend wisely, or they are stupid. But if they worked hard then they can be rich too. (The Conservative Party in the UK constantly re-iterates the last point.) The other is that Capitalism, as a competitive social system, naturally creates winners and losers and a lot more losers than winners. The people, who lose, lose at the expense of the winners. Capitalism can never be fair because all people are made of different qualities, not all of us are fast, clever, shrewd, hard working and un- scrupulous. Essentially the game isn't being played on an equal footing, thus social disparity ensues and the Darwinian theory of "Survival of the fittest." seems to exist all around the globe.


The problem of poverty is now starting to reflect around the globe causing huge social problems from drug addiction to war and famine. At some point even the social elite will be affected by this imbalance.