Some people ask “What causes poverty?” That’s the wrong question. Poverty is the natural state of man.
“What causes prosperity?” is the better question. The answers are known.
In the United States and Canada, the only question is, are you willing to participate?
Prosperity isn’t compulsory…but neither is survival!
From Robert Heinlein on the same subject:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”