centuries ago Aristotle said " The mother of revolution and crime is poverty " how true is this in our modern context as compared to Aristotle's time?

it is not so different at all, as the saying goes, Money is the root of all evil, or rather the lack of it. revolutions have been coming and going throughout the course of human history, for the better or for worst but it always brings about drastic changes in humans. for example, in the past the lower class citizens who usually make up the bulk of the country's population rebelled and created revolutions like the one in Russia back in the 1910s.

I agree to a large extent that the mother of revolution and crime is poverty. In an article by Wayne Arnold, in the International Herald Tribune, it was clearly stated that even though the average wages in Singapore were rising with the economy, the incomes among the bottom 30 percent of households had fallen since 2000. This implies that the income gap between the populations of Singapore had widened. While the rich are getting richer, the poor are also getting poorer. This widening will almost certainly have adverse effects on our country's social cohesiveness, the poorer community might round up together and plan a revolt or riots. They might even start a revolution on its own in Singapore.

Another example would be from the article by Geert De Clercq, under Yahoo! News Singapore, it states that one in three students on government scholarships came from wealthy families, which only make up 13 percent of Singapore households. Whereas, students from households of incomes less than $2,000 only make up 7 percent of scholarship winners. This clearly shows the advantages that students from wealthier families have over students from poorer background as they are more likely to have a headstart in terms of education.

although it is true that poverty tends to drive people to commit crimes in acts of desperation, not all crimes are due to that one sole reason. many crimes are done in the name of revenge, greed or even simply for fun. It is also not fully justifiable to say that the poor is responsible for the crimes as even the rich do commit crimes though that number is considerably less. Revolutions may also be sparked off by other reasons such as unhappiness with the government and certain policies which might be deemed unfair.

in summary, i would say that although poverty is one of the main reasons if not the main reason as to why crimes are commited or how revolutions are started, it is not the only reason as many other factors must be taken into consideration. The government has the responsibility to ensure that the widening gap is solved before it is too late.