Not sure what the pot smoking Republican jab is. I've never made a secret that I'm a doper...or a pretty hardcore conservative.

As for poverty, it exists for no other reason than it exists. You can throw out high minded stats, demographics, your own biases. The fact is, always has been and always will be, that poverty exists. Nothing is fair, nothing is equal. Some people do better than other people, some people don't do as well as other people. Some people end up in the middle. A lot of times through nothing more than an accident of birth. There is no society on Earth, ever, that has had total equality. Wealth and poverty are relative. Raise the minimum wage to $1000 an hour. There will be people that make more. Pull a law out of your ass promising everyone a salary of $10000 a month. There will be people doing side projects to supplement that salary. Make a law that no one can do side projects. The slope gets real slippery, yes? Is that the world you want? Stifled ambition, stifled creativity? Is that what the hordes of wage slaves you think will take to the streets want?

Capitalism isn't perfect. Nothing is. But it gives you the freedom to try for a bigger piece of the pie. That freedom is really pretty basic to the human condition. It's no promise. But there are no promises anywhere. Given the choice, I think most folks would prefer to have the freedom to try and fail than to not have the freedom to try at all.

Maybe that's naive thinking, but no more naive than thinking that some sort of proletariat street march is going to give anyone more financial freedom.