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>>tysone+(OP)
Poverty in America is a result of American capitalism, at a very high level. At a very very high level, it is caused by human greed, and a lack of love for our neighbors.

We can talk about wages and employment rates, and race all day long, but those are just details. It's human greed in the end, and our inability to love others like we love ourselves.

>>brickc+73
I don't care or need to love you. But I do love my family and myself. So if I need to put on a smile and provide a service or good to you for money to help the people I love I will do it. That's the point of capitalism and free markets.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”

>>whb07+HC
Ah, the old trope of trotting out Adam Smith. It may surprise you to know Smith was concerned about unfettered self-interest and the ways it would damage society. He wasn’t lauding self-interest and praising it as the perfection capitalism claims it to be.

Why not include some more of his gems?

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

>>bobway+bJ
I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest.

As far as I can tell almost everyone nowadays supports the idea of having markets which are partially free, but subject to some regulation (which was Smith's position). Hardcore Rand and Marx devotees are on the fringe. We are all just debating the degree and character of the regulation.

We debate within Smith's world because he was right and it's easy to see, free markets tend to produce big winners who have so much wealth and power that they eventually find a way to corrupt the market. Regulation should focus on this basic problem: there's no great social upside to a $100B company becoming an $200B company, whereas there's lots of social upside to promoting lots of competition, small firms, and a sense of fairness so that everyone can pursue their self-interest.

>>apatte+EU
> I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest.

I never suggested the parent indicated this.