"The mother of revolution and crime is poverty"(Aristotle)

Poverty is being without things, having little money, not many material possessions and in need of essential goods. In short, being poor means that the people have nothing, and they have to struggle to even survive everyday. After physically and mentally tortured for a long period of time due to poverty, evil thoughts of getting out of the vicious cycle through illegal ways or new ideas that they think that will improve their lives will gradually start to form in the poor people's minds. These thoughts and ideas cause them to forsake their values and they may eventually change their attitude and behaviour towards issues that are happening around them as long as they can stop being poor.

I only agree that the mother of revolution is poverty. There are many examples that happen in the past or happening around us now which can support my stand that poverty is the root cause for quite a number of revolution in history, however poverty does not increase crime rates in countries.

The famous revolution in Soviet Union is an example of revolution caused by poverty. The peasants suffered under the rule of the Tsar because many of them were too poor to even afford food for the whole family. They wanted someone to stand up and lead them out of the poverty cycle. And when Lenin the leader of the Bolsheviks stood up and offered the idea of "Peace, Land, Bread", and the idea of having equal shares of everything in the state gave the poor hope, eventually Lenin took over and formed the government. From this example, we can see that poverty indeed as the ability to spur people on to rebel so as to achieve a normal life and do not have to fear of starvation.

The other famous revolution is the Iranian Revolution and it has been called "the third great revolution in history," following the French and Bolshevik revolutions. It is a revolution that transformed Iran from a monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic. Extravagance, corruption and elitism (both real and perceived) of the Shah's policies and of his royal court had caused people in Iran to live in poverty. This was similar to the revolution in Soviet Union where people were attracted by the promise to have better lives after the revolution. This revolution also supports my stand that the mother of revolution is poverty.

Apart from these two revolutions, there were still many other revolutions and the similarity between them is due to poverty of people.

It is not true to say that crime rates will be higher in less developed countries because there are more poor people while crime rates are lower in more developed countries because there are less poor people. Instead, it is the other way round. From statistics from NationMaster, it is shown clearly that crimes such as thefts, bulgaries, kidnaps etc. which are related to what poor people would do to earn money, are more common in developed countries than in less developed countries where there are more poor people. Statistics have shown that it is United States which is leading in crimes such as thefts and bulgaries. I feel that as a country progress, the people will have more desires, hence more crimes are committed to earn themselves enough money to buy what they want. It is not true to say that poor people are not involved in crimes but the poor do not commit as much crimes as the people in developed countries do. Therefore, the statistics support my stand that poverty is not the real cause for high crime rates in countries around the world.

In conclusion, I feel that poverty is the cause for many of the revolutions but i do not agree that poverty is the main reason that cause crime rates to be high.