Poverty is not a matter of money. It is a state of mind.
Poverty, like its obverse, wealth, is inherited, and is generated in the attitudes and beliefs absorbed, usually at an early age and at the knees of one’s parents and larger family. One may educate oneself out of the narrow concepts and confines of limited thinking, and achieve the access to wealth not available to those who will not make what are sometimes very hard choices.
Conversely, the lessons, hard-won by previous generations, of how to preserve and grow the capital available to everybody in greater or lesser quantity, are ignored by the young and resistant, as they squander their birthright and pursue failure.
Phil Gramm was right. We are whiners who have made the bad situation much worse by making irrational choices and ignoring the historic wisdom of getting along on what they had available. The future has been mortgaged, and the bank just called in the note, demanding accelerated payment.
Their whole lives revolved around millet. There were seemingly no new ideas. For centuries.