No jobs or low-paid jobs because of little or no real education, with very limited opportunity to improve one's lot because of a static economy and a diminishing demand for unskilled labour.
Coupled with the fact poverty begets poverty - as wealth begets wealth - with those in the trap conditioned to lack ambition (or even hope), save perhaps in crime.
Nothing will change because it suits the rich to maintain an underclass to do all the menial tasks that make the world tick; if the poor were lifted up en masse there'd be no one left to do the muck jobs.
It doesn't help that most Kiwis are in denial about poverty. Surely we don't have genuinely homeless and hungry people in NZ?
Yes. We do.
All the excuses come trotting out: "They don't know what hunger is. Look at the starving in Africa." As if this were relevant.
I've never understood that nonsense argument. Do we want to see hordes of malnourished wretches on New Zealand streets before we'll acknowledge there's a problem?
At that level, we'd be well and truly stuffed as a nation, wouldn't we? So why wish for it?
It's as uncharitable as those who say, "There's work there if they want it," when plainly there isn't. With a quarter of the under-25s unemployed - almost half if you're brown - our prospects for climbing the OECD ladder look bleak.
Tinkering with the education system by bringing in national standards and allowing charter schools is a misguided attempt to address these issues - even if (to be charitable) it's genuine in intent.
That said, I do applaud the trials currently under way to find out what social service programmes actually get results - although it's astounding no one seems to have looked into this before now.
It's a pity none of these trials are focused in Hawke's Bay, given the Bay/East Cape region receives the most welfare spending per head ($2304) in the country.
But if government was serious about alleviating poverty there's one basic step it could take: ensure the availability and cost of food were such that everyone had access to good nutrition.
Food fuels body and mind, but is now more expensive here than in most developed countries, despite it being our major product.
For low-income prospects to change, people not only need to be taught to eat wholesome balanced meals, they must be able to afford to buy them.
Yet - and this, I suggest, is a measure of the integrity of government - a Northland trust that had been providing free lunches for hungry schoolkids in addition to its contract and at no cost to taxpayers was slapped down by Paula Bennett and co on the basis that if schools provided food parents would opt out of feeding their children themselves.
Goodness and then where would we be?
Well, the children of the poor would be better off, for starters, since many of their parents already do not feed them, at least not well or properly.
But that's too simple isn't it.
No gee-whiz factor to get sexy about. Just root cause and effect - and apparently we can't afford to go there.
Told you it was a contradiction.
That's the right of it.
