>> we don't view being poor as a personal failure

Thank you for pointing that out. I was very surprised when I moved to Japan from Europe that being poor is highly frowned upon and soelely seen as a personal failure. Obviously, that is mostly not the case and people in Japan work therefore sometimes multiple jobs, just to not look poor through their spending habits/clothing/gadgets w/e. Resulting in being more accepted by the society.

More surprising actually is, that really poor people (read: homeless) seem to view themselves as having failed in some regard and actually dont ask other people for empathy/remorse (they wont beg, mostly).