You might think that with more poverty, dealing with poverty might become a more pressing issue for society. But in actuality just the opposite is the case. When there's more poverty everywhere, people have an innate natural tendency to withdraw internally, and shut all that poverty out which surrounds them. Mentally they go into defense mode, and feel less willing to share what they have. When poverty is everywhere surrounding you, you just have a feeling like the entire situation is hopeless and no amount of money is really going to make any difference. As well as a fear that if you do not hold onto your own saved money, there's a remote possibility out there that you could end up one of those people. Look in countries like Mexico. The rates of altruism are very low. The greater the problem is, the less people will care about it. There's also the psychological phenomena of donor fatigue, and feeling overwhelmed. That's why when you see charities on TV soliciting your money to help hungry children in Africa they will typically try to focus on just one child. When the viewer sees that, subconsciously they will feel that their donation can make a difference. Paradoxically, if they showed big crowds of hungry children, there would be a tendency for the viewer to feel emotionally overwhelmed, like the problem is so big their donation is unlikely to make much of a difference to the problem.
If we can agree that the lowest quintile on our society bell-curve holds most all who live in poverty, how is it possible to ever change this? If we magically gave everyone in the 5th quintile 100% more of everything they desire, it's only a matter of time before this generosity forces equal increases in the other quintiles. When the dust settles a 5th quintile will still exist. IMO we cannot escape the 5th quintile and everyone in this group will be functioning in the lower rungs of society and the economy. Further, since 1970, only 50 years ago, US population has increased from ~200 million to ~325 million. This means today we have millions more Americans functioning in that lower quintile! Millions more means larger problems and more exposure of those problems. And our politicians exacerbate this reality in order to politicize the issue, yet none of them ever articulate solutions?!
All I can think of is when the liberal states like New York at one time shipped the homeless out of the state to conservative states like Texas. People don't want to view the homeless encampments. Dirtying up the landscape.
