Poor people consider Middle Class people as rich. Rich people and wealthy people are abstract, like the President or an entertainer, nothing we ever see. We see rich people all the time. In reality they are middle class.

Anecdote:

Your comment can extend beyond communal resources as well. For example my family refused to assist me in going to college. My mother died when I was 19 and I was left with her bills which I was not able to pay and as winter approached, no place to live.

I was continually guilted by comments about my leaving to become one of "them".

I then had to pay student loans, loans I should not have had to take out but because I was poor and my financial aid officer was local and knew my family as poor, I was denied that state grant. This is my identity, all I will ever be in that town.

Only when I resigned college and got a minimum wage job did my family help me buy a house and car.

I failed to get a middle class wage paying factory job because I was young and assumed unreliable and simply had no training on how to do a job interview.

Only after 6 years of working two full time jobs was I even called back by such a company but by then it was too late for me.

I injured myself while working and now receive disability of $1245/month, which is too much to qualify for food stamps and most other aid. Disability goes back 6 years to assess what your insurance payments should be. I was working two full time jobs. Had I been an average worker I would be receiving as little as $600/month but I would qualify for food stamps and other assistance.

I lost everything and I tried my best to keep what I had. On the other hand most people in my circle of acquaintances do not value possessions. Most of their possessions were regularly pawned. Playstation 3? Great for a couple of weeks until bills come due and then pawned. Often never recovered.

The plight of the poor is a source of profit for more than the rich, wealthy and politicians, middle class business owners and their ilk are just as culpable.

There are, as mentioned, cultural differences. An example is a car mechanic. I know many car mechanics and factory workers that bust their ass all day long. They go home and they do not shower. They get up the next day and put on the same unwashed overalls they have worn all week. They are literally physically exhausted. They are completely unkempt and their culture understands that and doesn't even think about it, that is normal.

When reflecting on this it is easy, and common in my experience, for poor people to have existential depression. Nothing they do matters. They may not be educated enough to know that they are depressed or why or to be able to research philosophy and develop a world view and engage with other cultures and explain their actions and plight themselves, but I see it constantly. I can do my best to represent them but I only know my perspective on their existence and my own life experiences.

What causes poverty to be the inescapable prison it is?

*Communal culture of those impoverished imposed for mere survival.

*Society at large stifling individual progress by judging one's socioeconomic position rather than one's character.

*Society at large exploiting the impoverished persons inability to meet the requirements placed upon them.

*Mental health, specifically depression and anxiety.

*Ignorance and lack of education of both those impoverished and those not.

We are all judged and relegated to our plight by the decisions we make without regard for the choices we had before us.