The poor do not have power

I have been mulling lately, based on my academic background in developmental economics, the simple truth that all power originates solely from a society's productivity. Those societies that fail to produce or to maintain a relative standing in productivity ultimately fail. While pondering this and how it relates to the capacity to read (there is a link), I came across this passage in James C. Davis's The Human Story: Our History, From the Stone Age to Today:

According to a Sumerian maxim, "The poor do not have power."

Marginally less true now in a democracy than in Sumeria but still fundamentally true.