Dalrymple on the Capacity of the Poor

Here is a brief video clip from Poverty Cure featuring one of my favorite writers, Theodore Dalrymple. He is the author of a tremendous book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. It is an outstanding picture of the ideologies, values, and behavioral habits of those in poverty Dalrymple came across in his vocation as a prison doctor and psychiatrist.


In the video above, Dalrymple urges those of us who are eager to help those in poverty to raise the questions,

"Why are these people uniquely unable to get out of their poverty? Is there not evidence, in fact, that when given the opportunity, they do in fact get out of poverty themselves?