Ever since wealth came into existence, poverty walked beside it as if the dividing line between life and death. In the lands with the greatest amount of wealth, the line can be a pleasant middle ground where people can live comforably. Only as the middle ground shrinks from the ends do we fully understand it's presence. However, there are many places where the line is a tight rope, leaving many fallen into poverty as broken huddles of starving masses.
The extremes are painfully real, but the inequalities of wealth is a far-reaching virus. Poverty is to be deprived- of basic human rights, basic freedoms, or enrichment. Poverty of the mind, of the blood, the Earth- lands raped and ravaged by war the only fruits the soil yields is poverty. That poverty can effect even the wealthiest man in the world. Even the man holding mounds of wealth can be morally bankrupt.
How do we fix a problem of wealth, the inequity inherantly presented by it's very flipside? Since the ages of noblity the problem has existed and even accepted by not only the ruling classes but often a number of the middle class citizens as well. Societies have even based caste-level systems to keep the impoverished and sick as less than human that exist even today. In the modernized society we all live in, something as primative as poverty should be non-existent. It's as outdated as slavery, akin to poverty as if they were branched from the same family tree.
Some would say redistribution of wealth would help give those without become able to do more for themselves. It's a step in the right direction, but true liberation from the shackles of poverty comes from education. Education and knowledge can empower any man to battle homelessness, hunger, or hardships. A person with wealth has nothing until they know how to use it- without that, it is as worthless as a pile of sand. The lack of education resources is a catalyst to keeping people impoverished and subservient.
First illustrated to me in the form of school closings within the inner city areas of my own hometown, the truth in the less edcuation available bringing about more poverty is more real than I had ever previously imagined. It's far more apparent to me that this was the status quo for establishing a lower standard of living. This inequality can cause or end most other inequalities caused by poverty worldwide, but too often do dictators use this and many other tactics to keep their people's will supressed. Often the first thing to be eliminated or censored is the education system and information access. We each have a personal resonsibility to end poverty worldwide. The first thing you can truly do to help aside from putting money in their hands is to give them the means to put money in their own hands.
