Escape from poverty prison.

• Author: Burke, Denis
• Position: Business & Finance

I RECENTLY DROVE the 528 miles on I-75 from Atlanta, Ga., to Sarasota, Fla. I lost track of the endless number of billboards on the side of the interstate offering gas, hotel rooms, and food. In the midst of it all there was one that grabbed my attention. It said that 47,000,000 Americans are on Food Stamps. What a shocking number. I am stunned by that figure, especially since the U.S. is the richest nation on Earth.

I am no stranger to poverty myself. I grew up on Cape Clear, a remote island off the coast of Ireland in the 1960s. As a kid, my family had no electricity or indoor plumbing. My brother Ciaran and I wore short pants and walked barefoot on the rugged roads and hills around the island. In 1986, I immigrated to New York with about $1,200 in my pocket. America has afforded me the opportunity to achieve success and prosperity.

There is a broad gap between those who are rich and those who are poor. I have suggestions for how Americans can escape from poverty prison to financial freedom. My definition of poverty prison is a state of mind where a large portion of our population has been conditioned by prior generations--as well as by their community, neighbors, friends, and others--to accept marginal living, poverty, debt, and scarcity. They conform to a false belief system. Consequently, they remain poor because their thinking, beliefs, and actions limit them from ever achieving financial freedom.

Despite the recession and the lackluster "recovery," the U.S. still is the greatest country in the world. It is a nation founded on capitalist principles in addition to liberty, equality, and justice for all. No matter who you are of where you come from, you are afforded the right to start where you stand--to create, build, work, and achieve whatever you dream is possible. This was the vision of the Founding Fathers--to create a land where anyone who wanted to succeed and prosper would have every opportunity to do so. Only in America is it possible to go from nothing to a self-made millionaire, lose your fortune, then start all over again and make it all back plus a bunch more. More than 100 years ago, people like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler, John Wanamaker, and W. Clement Stone, to name just a few, believed in the wealth-building principles and possibilities of this country and saw their financial dreams come true. They all became rich.

Why, then, is there such a wide gala between the rich and poor in the U.S.? Why aren't a...