There is real poverty and there is perceived poverty.
Real poverty is when people live in a hut and don’t have enough to eat. Perceived poverty is when people in prosperous countries are in a lower-income bracket. By world standards, these people aren’t poor. They have TVs, air conditioning and decent, reliable food. However they see themselves as poor. They feel like they are trash. And people who feel like they are trash do wrong things.
When I was living in the Soviet Union, the neighborhood in which I lived looked a lot similar to the American inner city. Their standard of living was lower than that of the American inner city. However the people did not feel poor. They felt well-off. And there was a lot less crime there than there is in the American inner city.
The problem therefore is not real poverty but perceived poverty. Once again, these people feel like they are trash. This then feeds criminality. The solution is not giving these people more taxpayer money. The solution is teaching them not to see themselves as trash and to encourage them to pursue opportunity.
These people aren’t actually poor. They only feel like they are poor, when by world standards they have it quite well. The problem is not their poverty but a mess in their heads. They think that they are poor, so they think that they are trash. It’s not a problem of actual poverty; it’s a problem of perceived poverty.
Problems of perceptions are rectified by improving the perceptions. These people need to be made aware of how good they have it by world standards. They also need to be given the strength that they need not to see themselves as trash. This being done, the problem of perceived poverty will have less of a hold. And the people who otherwise would be criminals will become productive and contributing.