Experts on poverty alleviation insist that training is absolutely vital for the poor to move up the economic ladder. But if you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty. Profit is unashamedly biased toward capital. In their powerless state, the poor work for the benefit of someone who controls the productive assets. Why can they not control any capital? Because they do not inherit any capital or credit and nobody gives them access to it because they are not considered credit worthy.


Muhammad Yunus. Former head of Economics at Chittagong University. Founder and managing director of the Grameen bank, a micro-credit pioneer. Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. 1999. Public Affairs, New York. P.133