DEEP

Ben Carson: Poverty Is a ‘State of Mind’

Caused by a “defeatist attitude.”

President Trump’s housing secretary on Wednesday proposed one way to cut down on poverty: Stop having a “defeatist attitude.” In a radio interview on SiriusXM, Ben Carson, the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, described poverty as a “state of mind” that could be prevented in some cases, saying parents should be passing down to their children “the mind-set of a winner.” “If you take somebody with the wrong mind-set, you can give them everything in the world and they’ll work their way back down to the bottom,” he said. Carson, who grew up in a low-income family in Detroit, said the government needs to steer people away from negative thinking. “I think the majority of people don’t have that defeatist attitude, but they sometimes just don’t see the way, and that’s where government can come in and be very helpful,” he said.