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Let's get one thing straight at the outset: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson did not intend to blame poor people for their poverty. He only sounded like he did.

"Poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind," the retired neurosurgeon said during a recent interview with his friend and former campaign spokesman, Armstrong Williams, on Sirius XM radio.

"You take somebody that has the right mindset," he continued. "You can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they'll be right back up there."

But if you take somebody with the "wrong mindset," he said, "you can give them everything in the world, they'll work their way back to the bottom."

It didn't take long for a blizzard of sarcastic tweets to explode on Twitter:

"Next month," tweeted Zerlina Maxwell, Sirius XM director of progressive programming, "I'm going to tell my landlord that I paid my rent with positive thinking!"

"You know what else is a state of mind?" Tweeted Star Trek's George Takei. "Always being a blithering idiot."

Nor did the timing of Carson's argument help. It was broadcast right after the Trump administration had asked Congress to cut billions of dollars from housing programs for the poor. At a time when cabinet officers usually fight for more money, Carson seemed ready to surrender.

Still, in a follow-up interview with NPR's Pam Fessler Thursday, Carson softened his earlier comments a bit. State of mind "is a factor," he said. "A part of poverty can be the state of mind -- poor in spirit."

Yet a wide variety of experts say the question that Carson raises -- Does the "wrong mind-set" cause poverty? -- works better when applied to certain individuals than to broad groups of people. Poverty can be either a cause or an effect of a miserable mindset -- or both at the same time. It's stressful to be poor -- and more stress can lead to more poverty.

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