[fleitz]

What about Wal-Mart? It hires the poor and caters to them as well.

You escape poverty by working your ass off and being extremely smart with your money. This is why rags to riches stories are so endearing because they are so exceptional. The difficulty with escaping poverty is not going to mc donalds when you have a little extra and want to treat yourself. It's buying one thing in bulk instead of a variety of foods. Its saving all that money and then buying one really nice piece of clothing so that people think you have money.

Basically it's all the tricks you need to know in life. My advice, ask any Japanese American / Canadian who lived during ww2 who was stripped of their assets and interned and then built all that back in the next decade.