Once upon a time, all human beings lived a “subsistence” existence. From our viewpoint today this would be called poverty. It took the advances of reason and science to drag the masses out of this quagmire and raise them up to what we today call the “middle class.” But what is the real difference between that poverty and a middle class?

The answer is amazingly simple, it is “doing something.” It is making the mental and physical efforts necessary to figure out how to better one’s position in life rather than just accepting the status quo and doing no more than those who came before you did. It took the vast majority of the population of the world until very recent times to recognize this truth but they are slowly coming around.

Wealth is what you create, not what you accept as the status quo. It is what you do, the efforts you make to change your station in life, that raises your standard of living. It isn’t something that is given to you passively by the government but what you actively do for yourself that will raise you from poverty to wealth, as has been proven by entrepreneurs time and time again.

The reason why this is important is that charge is often made that the “masses” are poor because the wealthy exploit them and they would they wouldn’t be poor but for the efforts of the wealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The wealthy do those things that create new products that all people; the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy enjoy and enhance everyone’s standard of living, rich and poor alike.

That is why the “poor” in the U.S.A. own more items like televisions, microwaves and automobiles than the “middle class” in European countries. The poor here are better off than the middle class in most of the countries of the world. The difference is that the level of “wealth” is so much greater that to be poor here is to be wealthy in comparison to the poor in other countries. Why do you think “obesity” is a terrible problem among the “poor” in this nation?

To “do” something is to take some physical object and create a useful product from the natural resources that make up that product. Even something as abstract as an accountant’s report or an attorney’s brief ends up as a modified physical object no matter how abstract the ideas that are contained upon it (the written, printed document.)

The amount of effort, on innumerable levels, that is required for that end result is the “end result” of people “doing something.” It isn’t subsistence living but an active effort to make life better by countless people in their own given professions. The final result is a new product, a new drug, a new software program that makes the life of everyone who uses that product better. That is the unseen wealth that so many overlook. To be very facetious, “Viagra is the result of wealth.” But then again so is insulin, or AIDS drugs.

The point is that there are certain people in this world who feel entitled to live a “subsistence lifestyle” simple because their ancestors once did so. But that is true of everyone. At some point we all have to enter into the present reality or remain mired in a poverty ridden past. Either you do something or you remain at the level of poverty that your ancestors lived at for centuries. In the latter case, you then forego the right to complain. Poverty is the choice you have made.

The miracle that is the United States of America is that anyone can chose to “do something” and make something of their lives. It is has been proven time and again. The task is to learn this lesson and then follow it, to make your life into something it wouldn’t have been if you just “did nothing” and followed the status quo. But this is a matter of choice and no one can make the choice but you.

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii can be reached at: mailto:don@grassrootinstitute.org