>Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural.
This is absurd. Man in nature has no house, no car, no money, no tools, no storehouse, he can eat only what he can catch, kill or forage for. Everything we have in civilisation was built by people working hard to escape the poverty and brutality of nature.
We can go into the debate of how much inequality is healthy for a society to encourage innovation and hard work. However in many parts of the world and even U.S. I would say many talented and intelligent people didn't even get the chance to work hard to earn something because the society didn't provide them such a chance. Your personal experience is moving but the reality is many people are rich not because they worked hard and many poor not because they were lazy. Those (extreme) inequalities are a result of injustice. If a society is too unfair, that will surely discourage people to contribute to the society.
This is absurd. Man in nature has no house, no car, no money, no tools, no storehouse, he can eat only what he can catch, kill or forage for. Everything we have in civilisation was built by people working hard to escape the poverty and brutality of nature.