Originally posted by Jyn
I'm not saying that these things aren't factors. I'm saying that, if you're intelligent enough, you'll be able to overcome anything else.
Sorry, but this sounds like mind over matter bullshit to me. Care to elaborate what you mean by "intelligent enough". That sort of unqualified statement isn't particularly useful while considering real life situations. Maybe a person with a ten million IQ could do some astonishing things, but real people, even people with extremely high intelligence can still be victims of circumstance, and find themselves perpetually poor. Even Albert Einstein was very poor for most of his life, and he was about as smart as people get.


Originally posted by Jyn
people in Western society who have no access to social programs, are omeless and jobless, and don't know when they'll have their next meal may be those exceptions... but really, their numbers are small enough to be insignificant.
Care to back that up with actual data?

A Children Defense Fund study found that one million black Americans under 18 years old are living in families whose annual disposable income is less than $7060 - which is half of the amount of money considered to be the 'poverty line' as defined by the US government. Are one million children of a single ethnic group a small enough number to be statistically insignificant? Given that there are only 40 million black Americans of all ages, one million children is about 2.5% of the entire black population, and probably represent a good 5 to 10% of the black population of that age group.

Originally posted by Jyn
Again, we're talking about Western society here. If a person is spending literally all of their free time trying to figure out how to acquire food without money, and it's to the point they have no time to better themselves, they're not intelligent enough to solve basic life problems.
In Canadian society, the deck is stacked against the poor despite our social assistance programs. An essay was written addressing this (regarding the United States, but it's just as applicable to Canadian society), and it can be found here.

Some interesting passages:

I chastised a co-worker for living in a motel room when it would be so much cheaper to rent an apartment. Her response: Where would she get the first month’s rent and security deposit it takes to pin down an apartment? The lack of that amount of capital – probably well over $1000 – condemned her to paying $40 a night at the Day’s Inn.

Poor people are less likely to have bank accounts, which can be expensive for those with low balances, and so they tend to cash their pay checks at check-cashing businesses, which in the cities surveyed, charged $5 to $50 for a $500 check.