I love conservatives. The very wealthy can siphon enormous amounts wealth to themselves with little contribution (at least relative to what they're taking) to society, but heaven forbid that the poor have cell phones or cable tv. Only porridge for them!
As Owen noted there must be jobs available. That's an external factor over which the poor have no control. Globalization has vastly increased the labor pool available to multi-national companies and US corporations have taken full advantage of it. They (and Wall Street) benefit while jobs are lost due to a 500 billion dollar annual trade deficit.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins ... 2fd8e558f9And not all poor are the same. My parents grew up in the Depression and their families were poor. But when the economy rebounded they had the ability to take advantage of educational opportunities to become part of the middle-class. At that particular time it should be noted the impediments to getting ahead through education were modest in California. There's s a reason why Dad (who grew up in the Boston area) met my Mom (who grew up near Shreveport) in California at a community college.
Some poor are disabled. Some come from dysfunctional backgrounds. Some come from essentially segregated communities dealing with a legacy of discrimination. And some have minimal education, skills and IQ. These are the intractable poor. Then there are some people who are poor for a while because of temporary set-backs (job loss, divorce, health problems) and can bounce back. It's therefore essential to not lump all of the poor together. That makes it easy to point fingers. The reality is that there are factors (both internal and external) that make it difficult for many poor to break the cycle of poverty. Globalization is not making it easier.
Having a minimum wage of $15 an hour to incentivize work is part of the solution. If someone works a full-time job they should be able to support themselves (I would be open to adjusting $15 a hour based on cost of living differences). I see education and even cell phones as part of society's infrastructure (infrastructure being the building blocks of society like roads, bridges that people can access without too much cost so that they are able to create wealth).
Trump and Sanders are having success for a reason. Our country's economic policies are helping an economic elite while essentially mortgaging our economic future. I guess most people still have enough food to eat and other stuff...but the lack of good, satisfying jobs creates insecurity. And at least Sanders and Trump are acknowledging that economic insecurity.
Why it's a good thing to totally disconnect work from wealth is a mystery to me. I can't imagine anyone doing any work worth more than a $1,000 dollars an hour. So 2,000 hours at that rate is about 2 million dollars. Earnings above that involve taking wealth from society that is clearly not earned and that should go to someone else (probably someone at the lower-end of the economic spectrum). Essentially, that's what the US did with regard to tax policy and unions from the 1930s through the 1960s. Now we've gone backwards and you see what happens--a proto-socialist and a proto-fascist gain traction.