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When I used to teach an intro economics course to freshman, they were wild-eyed idealists who thought they could solve Man's problems with a magic wand. One discussion turned to the elimination of poverty. The students all agreed that we must eliminate poverty, no matter what. I announced: "I can end poverty tomorrow." (At the time, poverty was defined as less than $9600 for a family of 4.) They eagerly awaited my answer. I said: "Line up all the people who make less than $9600 and shoot them." They were horrified.

I then asked them: "How does the person making $9601 feel?" They said: "Lucky!" I agreed, but I also pointed out that, in short order, they would start complaining that they were poor and they would want redress. The lesson finally ended with a discussion of the fact that anytime two people compare incomes and one has less than the other, the lower income person is deemed "poor". Indeed, unless you have a perfectly even distribution of income, you will always have "poor" people. A perfect distribution of income is pure communism and has been tried in numerous social experiments (e.g., New Harmony, Owenism, etc.) and it never works. Also, "poor" in the US is a hell of a lot different that "poor" in a lot of Third World countries.

Finally, we tend to glamorize poor people, giving them more status than most deserve. Rich people create jobs, give to charities, augment capital formation, plus making many other contributions to the economic benefit of society, while poor people do little to add to the economic well-being of society. If poor people worked at bettering themselves through education and hard work with the same gusto as they do pointing to rich people and blaming them for all their problems, we probably wouldn't have any "poor people".

I’m sick up to here with “the poor”.

The United States is the greatest country in the world! Our poor are overweight and most have at least one car and several television sets!

This is in the United Kingdom, where healthcare is supposedly free. That means it's uniformly abysmal, but why are poorer people STILL having a special problem with it? Too dumb to even go to the doctor in the first place?

The war on poverty is a quagmire! RETREAT!