The Poverty Business

The companies who profit from low-wage earners are making the opportunity divide worse by providing working poor financing programs that they can’t even afford. But even though these companies know the truth, the working poor cannot afford that much money for cars, computers, credit card payments or houses, these are things that low-income people want and need in their lives. The salesmen don’t explain the terms that their clients have to know clearly before they sign any documents. As a result, the working poor keep spending their money on payments every month instead of saving their money to improve their lives. Once they can’t improve their lives with their low income, they will not get out of poverty. It means they will stay in this vicious cycle and cannot make any change for themselves.

 I don’t think the responsibility should be held by a single person. It should be the responsibility of all the people who engage in this activity, including corporations, government, and individuals. The corporations shouldn’t just look at their own profit. They have a  responsibility to close the opportunity divide by making some financing plans for the working poor that really fit their needs instead of only making money from the poor. And the companies should also let their salesmen know the importance of explaining the contracts specifically enough to their clients who aren’t familiar enough with the financing plan. For the government, they should make some laws that can protect the people from being cheated by the corporations,and for individuals, they are the key people in the activity. They should also take responsibility for understanding the documents they are not familiar with before they sign. They should understand what the budget is for them every month and they should not spend more than that.

The specific contract content should be given clearly to the clients. They should have a copy of any documents they need in their native language. Another resource is the contact list with all the information of the staff that can help them when the clients have something they don’t know or they want to know more of. The government should provide some documents that tell the people what they should do when they are mistreated by the companies.