Most critics of modern commerce point to something called ‘poverty’ as a problem with modern commerce.
As a consequence the word ‘poverty’ and its associated idea are somehow relevant to modern commerce. But like the word ‘capitalism’ poverty is really a creation of the Marxist Left. The Marxist Left proposes that some form of government can change human behavior sufficiently to eliminate poverty.
Modern commerce has no spokespeople and even if it did, no one would claim that modern commerce has a connection to ‘poverty’ as thus defined. Modern commerce is an evolutionary mechanism for using human skills to fill human needs and desires. It does not proscribe any form of government nor does it advocate for any moral values (such as income equality) other than the ones that promote modern commerce itself (meritocracy, diversity and openness).
I personally know several things about American poverty. One is my description of a grant my Point Foundation made to a very poor family of 7 to travel around the U.S. in their old station-wagon and breakdown in every town and report back the treatment they received. They were treated like royalty, this Okie bunch, everywhere. Fed, clothed and housed.
I’ve worked for the State of California improving the care of adults who can’t care for themselves. They are in private homes in groups of six with astoundingly kind and generous care, including dressing them and feeding them very well and entertaining them with field trips. So ‘the poor’ must be people too competent to meet the 'adults needing care' definition.
I built a park for winos and other street people. I knew many of them very personally. These were street people who would be considered living in ‘poverty’. But from reading what I wrote it is clearly a group of people who choose this form of life to avoid the hassles of mainstream living.
Lastly, the way to be a poor woman in America has been documented many times: get pregnant without having a loyal married father of the child. Modern commerce does not have many ways to pay a low skilled woman with a child enough money for her skills for rent, food and other necessities.
Poverty is a problem not of modern commerce but of the government in which it resides. Look at Singapore, a city with no poverty because the authoritarian government doesn’t allow it. Singapore has a thriving modern commercial world but no poverty and the two are unrelated.