What is poverty?

I just watched a futuristic movie called Elysium. The general story is that an elite group of people live in the sky with fabulous technology, including health tech that fully heals terminal cancer and faces blown open. I think this is a false proposition from the get go because it supposes that health technology isn't duplicated around the world for cheaper costs once it is innovated originally (in America, usually). The same can be said of many technologies. We have market penetration for smartphones in the billions, and we have entrepreneurs organizing efforts to get internet and phones to people in poor countries. Now, that being said, here's what the movie supposes. The elite that live in their sky fortress naturally have the perfectly manicured landscape and architecture. Meanwhile, the people on Earth live in turmoil. Los Angeles has basically become a mix of Mad Max, Hunger Games, and Mexico City. Why? Why would technology deteriorate after said elites left? It's not like they are even the keepers of knowledge. Everyday people run universities and do the research and build the stuff that rich people can buy. They should have the capability to maintain those systems. Why does all of society succumb to the slum? It got me thinking about poverty in general. I'm not referring to having lots of money or even modern technology. Let's start with basic needs like clean water, clean streets, and basic medical care. What prevents a society from developing these institutions if they were engineered in some places of the world hundreds of years ago? To speak plainly, why can't a poor country in Africa, West Asia, or East Asia have the facilities of Europe or America from even 100 years ago? Surely you will admit that America and Europe were a lot poorer 100 years ago, but they didn't have chaos, they didn't have rivers carrying human excrement and disease, they didn't have filthy streets, they didn't have undrinkable water, and they largely didn't have a culture of violence. I'm sure that I'm dramatizing this a bit after seeing the dystopic future from the movie, but the point stands. If people were poor 100 years ago, but they had a good society, why are other people poor now, and they don't have a good society? *What is poverty?* An idea? Is just a matter of memes that societies hold that determine their fate?

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