poverty is good

i recently took a part in what was supposed to be a facilitation seminar. the facilitator (liminality.wordpress.com) uses something he calls open-space technology, and the group more or less dictates when the seminar would be about. it ended up branching in many directions and we surprisingly came up with an outcome.

anyway, one of the branches that we ventured into was social consciousness, more specifically, is society responsible for the poor? a lot of the points were discussed, but most importantly, a point was raised on how people should be given equal chances and sometimes it's society's fault there are poor people. poverty IS the product of society, but it is not a bad thing (very nice, coming from an upper mid-class citizen), but bear with me.

poverty is not good in the sense that poor people can't find food to eat or homes to live in, but rather that those who are less fortunate are as integral a part of society as doctors and engineers. poverty, or more generally, different economical classes, are normal, even essential, to the existence of societies. those who aren't rich are the ones who make our coffee and wash our cars and fix our schools and clean our bathrooms and pick up our garbage and work in even worse conditions. those people are not bad people. those jobs are not attractive, but they are jobs that need to be done. if we were all rich, if there weren't people who needed the money or lacked the skills to find better jobs, we'd all be rich people who can't buy anything because there aren't any truck drivers, shop-keepers or delivery boys. so for individuals, poverty is bad, but for society in general, poverty is good. it helps keep the garbage off the street (literally).