Yes, and poverty is more than just the  purchasing power of extremely low wages. Let me give you an example of ravaging a third world country, as talked about by John Perkins in <i>Confessions of an Economic Hitman</i>. I countries wealth should be in their natural resources and labor, but we have undermined that principle in favor of exploitation. Not to mention that the article itself starts out saying that once the rate of poverty is adjusted less people are in poverty! Magic!<p>&quot;One of my jobs as an economic hit man was to identify countries that had resources like oil and arrange huge loans for those countries from the World Bank and sister organizations. But the money would never go to the actual country; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in that country like power plants and industrial parks; things that would benefit a few very wealthy families.
    So then the people of the country would be left holding this huge debt that they couldn&#x27;t repay. We would come back and say, &quot;well, since you can&#x27;t repay your debt, you have to restructure your loan.&quot; That&#x27;s when the IMF comes in. So the World Bank makes the original loan and IMF shows up and says, &quot;We&#x27;ll help you restructure your loan, but in order to do that you have to meet certain conditionalities. You have to sell your oil or whatever the coveted resource is at a cheap price, to the oil companies without restrictions.&quot; Or they would suggest the country sell electric utilities, water and sewage, maybe even your schools and jails to private multi-national corporations. Or maybe allow military bases to be built; these sorts of things.&quot;