Herman Cain: It is your fault you are not rich...

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Let's not forget that a capitalist system depends for its success on 2 things: maintaining a steady unemployment rate of 4-5%. Keeping factory floor wages as low as possible. In those conditions you cannot say in any sort of absolute terms that not being rich is the fault of the individual. Because the economic system itself requires that there be materially poor people.

If the lowest paid worker in the country was paid $100/hr inflation would soon see that $100 devalue to the point that a person on $100/hr can't live on their income.

You simply cannot have a country where everyone is rich (by some fairly broad definition of rich). Ergo it cannot be the case that it is all the individual's fault that they are poor.

Sure Herman Cain was raised by parent who taught him to be in control of his own life. But he was also blesed with great intelligence, which was none of his doing. You are deluding yourself if you think that every poor person out there has the inherent intellect to get a masters in mathematics if they only got off their lazy arses and tried.

There are people of natural (genetic) high potential, medium potential and low potential. And like just about every natrual variation it follows a bell curve distribution. Telling people in the lower quartile it's their fault that they are not rich is as ignorant as telling a blind person it's their fault they can't see.

Now given I'm in the upper quartile of intelligence (probably in the top 15%) then the fact I'm not super rich certainly is my fault and I accept that entirely, and I don't care because I don't want to have to do what it takes to be mega rich (which ALWAYs involves shitting on other people either directly or indirectly). I don't blame Wall street for my not being wealthy (though relative to the world's population I'd be in the top 10% so by some definitions I am rich, though I don't feel rich), but i do blame Wall Street greed (and govt regulation, or lack thereof) for the macroeconomic situation that perpetuates grinding poverty as bad as almost any 3rd world country in the richest nation in the world.