It really is quite a puzzle Brian, given we are only one country, one economy and harming any part or section/selected demography, harms all of it!

Folks who understand the multiplier factor know that money and wealth making opportunities are multiplied when money works for all of us, for discretionary spending, affordable housing that improves the lot of the least, all while improving prospects for the innovator and entrepreneur; rather than an entirely intolerant, harmful bricks and mortar mindset.

And crueled by policies that unfairly advantage the most advantaged, tax avoiding multinationals and all manner of tax avioders, who add injury to insult with market manipulation and control; and the cretins who serve them, like modern day economic Benedict Arnolds?

The great Depression and the Great Recession were the result of concentrating to much wealth in too few hands, and gifting control and the price of capital and energy into those same harm creating hands, thus putting the brakes on the multiplier effect and the economic growth that that in turn creates, throughout the length and breadth of the/any economy.

We need to refocus and become an innovating economy that once again makes things!

WE also need to "CHOOSE TO" eliminate the economic parasites and profit demanding middle men, who effectively double the cost of living or just doing honest business, while adding nothing, save a few suits of the emperor's new clothes! And just eliminating that, will take all the air out of the sails of the cost wages spiral!

Moreover real tax reform will and must improve the lot of every income earner, and with it the economy boosting discretionary spend!

And just nothing to fear whatsoever in any of the above, indeed the only thing to fear is fear itself and or manifestly mendacious misrepresentation!
Rhrosty.

Poverty is caused by breeding.

Some breed for biblical reasons while others breed just because they seek pleasure and cannot control their sex-organs. Whichever is the case, those whose families failed to save for a rainy day but instead bred like rabbits, were unable (and/or unwilling) to invest in their offspring's good education - so now they are poor.

For obvious biological reasons, these are now the majority and now they look for justifications to rob the minority - those families who did tie their genitals in a knot and saved, whether because they were Calvinist or just because they were wise and responsible.

Both the selfish "Eat, drink and be merry" mob, who justify their life-style on the pretext that life is finite, so their actions cannot affect them beyond the grave; and their fatalistic counterparts who call themselves "religious", casting responsibility out the window on the pretext that "God will provide", are equally responsible for the poverty of their families.

This has little to do with religion - and much to do with nature: scavengers and parasites are rife in the animal kingdom.

Religion (excluding those who merely call their teachings "religious") is supposed to uplift us from this animal kingdom, but the author seems to be uninterested - he wants to stay there!

If the burgeoning under class stopped 'burgeoning', there would eventually be no underclass, and the rest of us would all be better off (less spending on welfare). As Yu says, more or less, it's all in the breeding.

Of course some of the fastest and most prolific breeders are back-to-the-past religious "conservatives" and/or fundamentalists, especially in Islamic countries.
And of course Israel where they are heavily subsidized by the state, which in turn is heavily subsidized by the USA. Which is to say that the ordinary USA taxpayer is paying to support these large families, the male members of which study the Torah (etc) on a full-time basis, while they are simultaneously exempt from military service (unlike the rest of the population).

Meanwhile there is a hell-deep reservoir of fear, anger and frustration growing all over the world. In some sense most of todays Online Opinion essays are an acknowledgement of this.
But what is to be done?
Nobody really knows.
But in the context of USA politics (and by extension the rest of the world too) a recent essay provided a timely warning. It was The Pitchforks Are Coming - For Us Plutocrats by Nick Hanauer.

Mitt Romney is of course one of the said plutocrats - a professional vulture capitalist. Mormons are prolific breeders too.

Given mormons are also prolific breeders, it therefore follows they must also live in abject poverty!

Mitt Romney being a classic example and proof positive!
Rhrosty.

One wonders what the ethical underpinnings of the author are.
He doesn’t even offer us any arguments, rational or bogus, as to the rich dishonestly gaining their wealth.
Apparently gaining it honestly or not is irrelevant. Because they are rich they deserve to be looted. Did he gain all his political philosophy reading Robin Hood tales?
If people are told that there is nothing morally questionable about simply taking what you want, does it ever occur to him that this may have nasty manifestations in the long term, when people find they have needs, material or physical, that desire satisfying?

Well those that have unmet needs, are hardly likely to be the well off! And able to engage in tax minimisation, that may well see their personal liability reduced to just 15 cents in the dollar, then expect to be first in the queue for taxpayer funding amenity!

While the disadvantaged are forced by the eternal price wage spiral to jump over successive braket creeps!

I remember a season picking apples and the foul mouthed abusive farmer (sunday morning Christian) always on my case demanding production outcomes none of the other apple munching pickers were required to match.

It would have been different if we had our own individual bins and were paid by the bin and not the day!

When I found alternative employment he was all contrite and wanted me, his best picker to stay on!

This all too common story, highlights the fact that the better off, usually get there thanks to serendipity, [picking the eyes out of charity bins,] or flogging other folks!

And have no inherent sense of financial justice or shame?
Rhrosty.

Brian, I think the flaws in your argument are twofold.

Firstly your belief that wealth is a zero-sum game - that the enrichment of one is to that extent the impoverishment of another - is flatly incorrect. A moment's reflection will show that, if this assumption were true, mankind could never have progressed beyond the standard of living of our distant ancestors, since one person's gain would have been another person's loss.

You have made no attempt to justify your assumption, which you don't even articulate or identify. You don't even seem to be aware that you are making it. This failure completely invalidates your entire argument.

For your information, if the incomes and wealth of the people of the world were equal, the result would be the death by starvation of thousands of millions of people in short order.

You have only displayed complete ignorance of the economics of what you are talking about, which in an essay on political economy, is inexcusable.

Secondly, by the same token, you make no attempt to identify, explain or justify your assumptions in favour of the State as some kind of wealth-creating or wealth-optimising device.

I challenge you to do so, and if you do, I undertake to show why your belief is every bit as irrational and religious, as the belief of religious people in religion.

All you have done is transfer irrational religious credulity from an open-ended faith in the authority of the church to that of the State.

That's a complete fail, twice over.

In a word, you're talking nonsense. Go ahead: accept my challenge.