Why are there poor people in the world?

Todays Daf (Bava Basra 10a) discusses this question and gives a very startling answer. The Gemara brings 2 stories with non-Jews asking R' Meir and R' Akiva 2 questions:

1. Why are there poor people (why doesn't God provide for them)?
2. If God made someone poor why do we then give him charity?

The answer given is so that we, the charity givers, should be saved from hell, in other words to give us a chance to do a mitzva. R' Shteinman a few years ago used this Gemara to explain why people shouldn't buy life insurance. He was reported saying, life insurance is not worth it, as the merit of giving tzedaka to the widows and orphans is what is saving this generation from destruction.  I think that the government of Israel should use this answer next time the Haredi parties ask for government  money.

There is an obvious question, why should the poor person have to suffer so that you can do a mitzva? R' Dessler explains that the poor person also benefits, in fact he benefits more then the charity giver, by accepting his fate he gets a bigger reward then the charity giver. This seems to be quite difficult, I think most people would say I would rather be the rich person giving with a smaller reward then the poor person getting with a bigger reward.

The Gemara later on the Amud makes the famous statement that מזונות של אדם קצובין לו מראש השנה, a persons income is fixed on Rosh Hashana, see my post A person's income for the year is decided on Rosh Hashanah? for a full exposition of this.

What we see from here is that income and poverty are because God wants it that way. People are poor because God made them poor and therefore there really are no solutions for poverty. People will always be poor and we should just accept that. On the other hand, as I pointed out in the linked post above Charedi society doesn't act that way. In fact, the Charedi world is full of quick rich schemes and other illegal ventures because they clearly see a connection between hishtadlus and results. This leads to a theological position that can't be taken seriously. R' Feivel Cohen can say all he wants that there can't be a tuition crisis because the Gemara says that you will get the money back, the fact is that there is a tuition crisis.  The Gemara can say that a person's income is set at Rosh Hashana but it doesn't stop people from working hard/trying to make more money later on in the year even though it's a futile activity. Again we see that to be a believeing job you need to be able to take a whole lot of cognitive dissonance.