start asking questions...

Are the poor responsible for their state of poverty?
Or is society culpable for having failed them?
Is the prevailing social Darwinism - the survival of the fittest -
morally and humanistically defensible?
Or does society debase itself and drift towards barbarism
by abandoning its weakest citizens?

Are the causes of poverty located primarily at the individual and national levels? Or are the ultimate causes more of an international nature, including global market forces? Should national governments be allowed to abandon the poor and vulnerable to the vagaries of national and international markets? Or do governments have a solemn duty to protect human rights enshrined in most constitutions? Do national governments have the will and capacity to resist the inexorable impetus of neoliberal globalisation? Or are most governments capitulating to the combined might of global capitalists and transnational corporations aided and abetted by multilateral organisations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO?

Will poverty be eradicated when the benefits of an unencumbered free market system filter down through greater investment and better allocation of resources? Or will free market fundamentalism produce greater inequality, exacerbate poverty, and sound the death knell of human rights, democracy, world peace and the environment? Could benevolent capitalism and enlightened self-interest lead to a more equitable distribution of the world's scarce resources? Or is it in the nature of capitalism to encourage and entrench vicious avarice, shareholder fundamentalism and the tyranny of the market which is so devoid of humanity? Was the demise of social programmes like the New Deal and the Welfare State, with the resultant elimination of crucial safety nets for the poor, inevitable because of unsustainability and the enormous demands placed on national fiscuses? Or were these funds in fact siphoned off into Corporate Welfare for the obscenely wealthy global capitalists and transnational corporations in the form of corporate tax cuts and privatization of state assets?