What about habituation?
Habituation does exist; it is the effect of an action which is similar to the cause, or the tendency to repeat previous actions. Lamrim texts extensively discuss it.
Mere habituation with skillful actions, however, is not is not enough to counteract afflictive mentalities such as desirous attachment together with its root, ignorance.
Therefore, no matter how much one gets habituated with giving, as long as one remains prey to ignorance and desirous attachment, one is bound to get attached to the very riches resulting from one's previous generosity, and thus develop greed, and thus be reborn in the hungry ghost realm.
Thus, one may confidently say that there is not one single hungry ghost who did not previously become habituated with giving, or generosity. By the same token, there is no single hell denizen or animal who did not previously become habituated with patience and moral discipline.
That's why samsara is a wheel, a cycle. The linear idea of the world, according to which the virtuous has always been virtuous and the non-virtuous has always been non
We were told that our habituation comes from our previous lives.... and so we will do things 'naturally' in this life due to our previous lives' habit. If one is generous in previous lives, one should be 'naturally' practice generosity in this life as well.
Tell this to the hungry ghosts who were previously generous, and then wealthy, and then got attached to the wealth created by their own previous generosity, and then became hungry ghosts as a result of their greed, no matter how habituated they were to generosity once upon a time.
The idea you propose, that the rich are necessarily generous, and thus that the poor are necessarily stingy, stinks to the Calvinistic idea that those of superior birth are by nature virtuous, and those of low birth are by nature wicked.
Even worse, it stinks to the infamous racist Jewish ideology of ”choseness”, or that those who are born Jews belong to a ”chosen people”, with special rights over and above non-Jews (dismisssively called ”goys”).
In the Law of Cause and Effect (Karma), there is this explanation "that an effect can become a cause for a future event" thus the "chain of events continues..."
Your ”Law of Cause and Effect (Karma)” source sounds more like a pseudo-Buddhist almanac written by some Christian missionary of the 19th century. It is plainly wrong to start with.
Not always an effect becomes a cause for a future event, because not always an effect is an action, and only actions are causes for future events.
Therefore, one should carefully scrutinize statements and their sources, always relying on reason and authentic Buddhist sources, so as not to be duped by pseudo-Buddhist junk as it happened to you.
This concept is applicable for both positive and negative actions, hence, the rich people that were generous in previous lives, with the force of their karma, will most likely be generous in this life.
This again is the infamous un-Buddhistic, Calvinistic idea that the rich are by nature virtuous, and the poor are naturally non-virtuous.
Actually, most people who are born rich are already spoiled in their early childhood, and thus become the greedy adults mentioned by the survey you reported in the original post.
Also, the Buddha taught that sufferings such as poverty may become a favorable condition for the development of virtue, such as generosity, which is also confirmed by the same survey.
Your original proposition was that the Buddha was ”wrong”, and contradicted by the mentioned survey, and that the Buddha supported the perverted Jewish-Calvinistic idea of the natural superiority of the rich or the ”chosen”.
However, it turns out that not only the survey confirms Buddha's teachings, but also that you lack any clue about the same Buddha's teachings, which you have grossly, if not maliciously, misrepresented.
A famous Buddhist saying goes:
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
This is a fake ”Buddha” quote. Buddha never said this. The author of these words is a guy called Frank Outlaw, the president of a U.S. supermarket chain called Bi-Lo, and was published in a Texas newspaper feature called “What They’re Saying” in May 1977. See
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/10/watch-your-thoughts/ and
http://www.fakebuddhaquotes.com/the-thought-manifests-as-the-word/By the way, this fake Buddha ”quote” has been consistently used by irresponsible, pseudo-Buddhist, Jewish propagandizers, such as Sharon Salzberg and Lama Surya Das, as though they were authentic Buddha words. Their malicious intent of falsifying Buddha's teachings is quite clear.
How come this is not the case?
As already shown, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey findings are pretty consistent with Buddha's teachings.
What is not consistent with Buddha's teachings is the way you grossly misrepresent them, based on fake sources seconded by asinine reasonings.
What went wrong?
You, from the bottom down.
