Jesus said that the poor will always be with us. If nothing else, people will always be making themselves or other people relatively poorer, through wickedness, indifference, or other counterproductive behavior, regardless of overall abundance. Poverty is often the result of some spiritual poverty, on the part of the poor or the rich, or often both.

But still, as the late Pope Francis quoted, in his message to commemorate the fifth Day of the Poor,

“In this context, we do well to recall the words of Saint John Chrysostom: “Those who are generous should not ask for an account of the poor’s conduct, but only improve their condition of poverty and satisfy their need. The poor have only one plea: their poverty and the condition of need in which they find themselves. Do not ask anything else of them; but even if they are the most wicked persons in the world, if they lack the necessary nourishment, let us free them from hunger. ... The merciful are like a harbour for those in need: the harbour welcomes and frees from danger all those who are shipwrecked; whether they are evildoers, good persons, or whatever they may be, the harbour shelters them within its inlet. You, too, therefore, when you see on land a man or a woman who has suffered the shipwreck of poverty, do not judge, do not ask for an account of their conduct, but deliver them from their misfortune” (Discourses on the Poor Man Lazarus, II, 5).”