Why Are There Poor People?
(NPR Commentary)
By Dinesh D'Souza

'Why are there poor people?' This question was recently posed to me by a woman who had just visited my native country, India. She had seen the slums of Bombay, filled with shriveled people and squalid huts. And she was horrified. Why, she asked, do people have to live this way? And why does poverty persist even in rich countries like the United States?

These questions typically have a left-wing answer and a right-wing answer. The left-wing view is that poor people are the victims of unjust social structures. Historically this view is sound. Slavery, colonialism—these were oppressive institutions that prevented people from exercising their freedom and rising in society.

The left-wing argument is also an accurate description of the situation in much of the Third World today. If you take a train through the Indian countryside you will see farmers beating their pickaxes into the ground, frail women wobbling under heavy loads, children carrying stones. These people are working incredibly hard, yet they are getting nowhere. The reason is that institutional structures are set up in such a way that creativity and effort don't bring due reward. No wonder the people in these countries are fatalistic.

But the left-wing view fails is in its effort to explain the persistence of poverty in the modern West. Here in America, where are the "institutional structures" that are keeping the poor down today? The truth is: they don't exist. Indeed the two institutions that drive Western economies are capitalism and scientific technology. These institutions haven't really taken root in Third World cultures, where people continue to eke out a subsistence living and have not figured out how to control the vicissitudes of nature. But in the West capitalism and technology have worked together to lift the vast majority of the population out of deprivation and up to a level of affluence that, in the words of novelist Tom Wolfe, would "make the Sun King blink."

So what about the underclass, the inner-city poor that we hear so much about? I agree: it is terrible to grow up in many parts of the Bronx, New York, or Anacostia, Washington DC, or South Central Los Angeles. But that’s not because of material poverty. Rather, it’s because of the shocking moral behavior of the residents. High crime rates, the crack trade, and the absence of stable families all work together to destroy the cultural ecosystem and make normal productive life so difficult in these communities.

This is where the right-wing argument gathers force. Conservatives contend that the bourgeois virtues of family stability, the work ethic, the respect for education and law are essential for individuals and groups to advance, and where those are jlacking, chaos is the predictable result.

The solution is to recognize that prosperity does not come naturally, and that both institutional structures and social values must be favorable in order for poverty to be eradicated. If people in Barbados, Bombay and the Bronx want to be prosperous they should establish free market institutions, embrace modern technology, and cultivate the bourgeois virtues. This is easier said than done, but if it is done, then perhaps there won't be any more poor people left in the world.

(See also: The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence)