Poor doesn’t exist

I ran across this article http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/opinion/what-makes-people-poor.html?_r=0 titled “What Makes People Poor” that discusses, at length, what the author thinks makes people “poor”.  I did not find any startling reveleations in the article, but I was VERY struck by the title and the mindset.

While people can be poor, poor is not really a “thing” any more than cold or dark are things.  Poor is the absence of prosperity so the proper question is what makes people prosper.  The distinction is not trivial; it is the difference between planning to succeed vs. planning not to be “poor”.