Carson: ‘Poor people have pride too’

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson argued on Sunday that lawmakers did not understand what it is like to live in poverty.

{mosads}“I’ve experienced every economic level,” Carson told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Poor people have pride too,” he argued of welfare programs. “They don’t just want to be taken care of.”

Carson cited his impoverished upbringing in Detroit as evidence of the experiences needed to best help the destitute.

Most politicians, he argued, are clueless when they talked about wealth inequality.

“I’m not sure in some cases they actually understand real life,” Carson said.

“There’s real-life experiences and then there’s politics,” the retired neurosurgeon added.

Carson charged that dependency on the government fundamentally hurts the poor.

He cited his single mother’s independence and work ethic as a better response to the problem of poverty.

“She has had the single biggest impact of any person on my life,” Carson said.

“She refused to be a victim and she refused for me and my brother to be victims,” he said.

Carson added that the experiences of his youth had prepared him for potentially serving in the White House.

“My life has been so full of people telling me what I couldn’t do I would be more concerned if people told me I could do it,” he said of criticisms towards his political inexperience.

Carson, who has never previously held public office, announced last Monday that he would seek the White House in 2016 during a rally in his hometown of Detroit.