Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

Inverting the classic self-made-success narrative, Marx turns “worked my way up from nothing” into a punchline by landing on “extreme poverty.” The joke satirizes boosterish American rhetoric about upward mobility and the moralizing idea that hard work reliably yields prosperity. It also plays on Groucho’s stage persona: the fast-talking cynic who punctures pretension and refuses sentimental uplift. The line’s humor depends on the abrupt reversal—“up” becomes “down”—and on the exaggerated phrase “state of extreme poverty,” which mimics official or high-minded language to heighten the absurdity.