Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a good example of why poor people stay poor.

Charlie Bucket’s family is portrayed in the movie as being destitute. They usually survive on “cabbage water”. When Charlie brings home a loaf of bread with his first week’s pay, Grandpa Joe refers to it as a “real feast”, so they obviously didn’t have any spare money whatsoever. I think it comes down to the poor choices of some of the family members, particularly Grandpa Joe himself.

A few examples:

• Even though they can’t afford food, Grandpa Joe still has money for his tobacco habit.

• He encourages Charlie to spend all his spare money on chocolate so he can win the prize, even though the odds are nearly impossible. This is functionally the same as buying lotto tickets.

• Once he does give up his tobacco, he uses the money to buy chocolate as well.

• All of the grandparents have supposedly been bedridden for years, yet when Joe gets the chance to go to the chocolate factory, he magically gets up and dances around the room. He could have been working all this time instead of living off the back of Charlie’s mother. It’s like he’s been running a disability scam or something.

• He encourages Charlie to break the rules and steal the Fizzy Lifting Drinks, which disqualified him from the prize; Joe then gets angry when Wonka calls him out on it and suggests that Charlie give the Everlasting Gobstopper to Slugworth.

All of these things show that Grandpa Joe has many bad habits that have left his family poor for years. If Charlie hadn’t miraculously found the last golden ticket and hadn’t also had the moral fortitude to give the Everlasting Gobstopper back to Wonka, their fortunes would never have changed.

Grandpa Joe is the only real villain in this movie.