Sure, INDIVIDUALS are at fault for a variety of options, but if you're looking to blame the poor as a group for something, you're using the wrong criteria, since it's a status that has no direct mapping to choice.
> the rich, powerful and elite are also not responsible for anything either? Just individually?
The distinction is that money provides opportunities, poverty is the lack of them.
You can hold the wealthy responsible for what they do with their wealth, or what they don't do with their wealth. Because wealth is something they HAVE. The poor, on the other hand, don't HAVE anything, so you can't say they are using their lack of wealth foolishly, nor can you say they are failing to use their lack of wealth wisely.
FWIW, you could argue that they are failing to handle their economic situation as well as they could.
But even that is fraught, since, in the current economic culture, consumers are pretty much constantly being preyed on, and actively encouraged to make questionable decisions. Consider, for example, the predatory mortgage practices on the part of the banking industry during the 2000s. Or predatory lending practices on the part of the student loan and private college industries. Or payday loan companies.
(There's arguably a double standard there - if it's a person with relatively little money swindling people out of relatively small amounts of money, it's con artistry. If it's a company with lots of money swindling people out of lots of money, caveat emptor.)
No the rich and powerful have choices of how to act, while the poor have very little. Additionally, the rich and powerful are the ones who have structured the system in such a way that the proletariat have very little choice in the matter.
Sure, INDIVIDUALS are at fault for a variety of options, but if you're looking to blame the poor as a group for something, you're using the wrong criteria, since it's a status that has no direct mapping to choice.