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Blaming the poor for their own plight is a tasty little ideological morsel that lets us all off the hook and blurs the lines of a complex situation. Every time we get into this argument it always comes back to the same face-off: Argument 1: people are 100% responsible for their own situation; Argument 2: social factors overwhelm individual choice, making it harder to choose your own path.
IT'S ALWAYS BOTH/AND, PEOPLE!!!
It's a poor excuse for a society that doesn't have some kind of back-up plan for when Plan A (100% personal responsibility) doesn't work, and it never will. Walk a mile in someone else's shoes (say, an average-intelligence kid born into a dysfunctional family with limited means) and see how much indomitable free will you feel like you have. It's difficult to make educated choices that are in your best interest when the options and information at hand are somewhat limited by institutional and social factors beyond your control.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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