The Font of Envy

“However, people who think like this do so because they have asked the wrong question, or looked down the wrong end of the telescope. They have asked where poverty comes from instead of where wealth comes from. You might as well ask how ignorance of cardiac surgery ever came into being, rather than knowledge of it, as if cardiac surgery were an activity natural to man in his most primitive state. If you continue to find poverty puzzling, you will be led sooner or later to the conclusion that poverty is caused by wealth” (Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice, p.95).