You're so timid. The solution is obvious. Take wealth from the privileged superrich and use it to educate the poor.
And I mean actual education, like khans academy, not fake education, like American public schools (politically correct obedience training)
When 1% of the population hordes 50% of the wealth through nepotism, cronyism, monopolies, oligopolies, and bribing politicians, the solution to poverty is obvious. Guillotines.
The markets can't be free when bribery, nepotism, cronyism, monopoly and oligopoly dominate them. Free the markets from the cartels of privilege.
We already know how to cut poverty, based on other countries like the Nordics where poverty is lower: Take more from the rich and give more to the poor.
Unfortunately, rich people love money too much, so we're not allowed to talk about the real solution, and have to talk about all these fake solutions instead.
Education might help but it won't solve the problem. As a thought experiment, what if the government let everyone pursue phds for free, would we still have poor people? Of course! The way to fix this problem is through direct redistribution. Trade and globalization are not pareto efficient, they are kaldor-hicks efficient. And while we have been sending jobs overseas to the benefit of the upper class, we've also been lowering their tax rates, essentially benefitting the rich at the expense of the poor on both sides of the equation. High, progressive tax rates and strong social safety nets can get us out of this mess, everything else is a diversion.
As you hand out more free money you just cheapen the money in everyone's pocket and make them poorer. The 20k you just gave away won't even buy the amount of goods it would have before you created the program. This is just some redistribution of wealth gimmick. Giving away money does not address the source of poverty. Would you patch your code this way?
To end poverty you must fix the education system. Perhaps vouchers would encourage competition and force schools to compete for students by improving the quality of education. Perhaps someone would have to balls to end the process by which bad teachers are transferred from school to school because the union and public admin refuse to do something about it.
To end poverty you must cut the costs of education. There is no reason a 4 year college should cost what it does today. Look at what some administrators and professors make compared to what they do. Look at the quality of what you can learn on the internet for free. These need to come in line. State universities don't need water parks.
To end poverty we must educate on safe-sex.
To end poverty we must encourage healthful eating choices. We must get partially hydrogenated oils and all the other crap out of are food.
To end poverty people in the US must realize that left/right blue/red republican/democrat foxnews/msnbc is a false paradigm. People must not be divided by these things. People must see past all of this noise and see who is working against the best interest of people in favor of the people who hold the most money. People must see that all policies we have are in fact creating more poverty. To end poverty, we must fix the source of the problem - the united states congress and the federal reserve.
It is solvable in simplistic terms. It is not solvable by throwing money at it. It just an dumb attempt to guilt people and further this constant bemoaning there are some super rich people in our world.
Most people are poor because of their government. Either through corruption, lack of property rights, or wars both internal and external. We cannot fix poverty in this world until people are guaranteed freedom and safety of person and their property.
And your solution is to force people to pay involuntarily and if they don't, send men with guns to put them in a cage or die if they forcibly resist? Why haven't you robbed some people on the street to pay for some starving African children, that would be for the better good as many would see it as well, and surely some guy in a suit can spare it.
I'm aware economists models are imperfect but it's rare to see someone invoke a monopoly (a violence imposed one at that) brings the highest effectiveness.
Anything that proposes solving complex problems with a single, simple solution is pretty much guaranteed to have a fatal flaw.
In this case: If you give everybody a baseline amount of income, then prices will invariably rise to absorb it all, returning everyone to their previous positions (and problems).
If you actually want to tackle the problem of poverty, you need to first solve the problem of monetary inequality, which invariably involves taking it from the rich (who have lots of resources to fight against such measures).
"Applied" education is the best path for the poor.
Don't teach the 3-Rs.
Teach them how to fix their problems:
1) fight the cycle of poverty
2) weaken gangs
3) reduce crime and drug usage
4) renovate local housing, schools, and infrastructure
5) create and run local businesses
6) employee all teenagers after school and during the summers,
etc.
Once they have pass those classes, they can learn the other stuff.
And this is how we should pay for it.
Sell treasury bonds like we would to raise funds to improve our national infrastructure.
In other words, invest in poor people in such a way that you can repay the investment from their future taxes.
Specifically, pay poor people to work their ass off to fight poverty.
(No person should be paid to do nothing; that is a horrible idea.)
Allow the wealthy who want to reduce their taxes to keep $x in taxes for every $y they invest in hiring poor people to fight the causes of poverty.
In fact, we should create poverty fighting companies who complete and measure their success by the quality of life improvements they cause.
The higher performing companies lower the taxes of their investors.
(This isn't even expensive. Paying a teenager to avoid a life of crime costs $1000s/year and putting them in jail costs $10,000s/year. Furthermore, providing teenagers with IUDs costs $100s and saves $1000s.)
You don't believe that one can eliminate poverty without eliminating upside for people to reach for? I'm not talking about handouts, necessarily, as a solution to poverty. Education/training, things to provide opportunities to help with economic mobility, and other programs would be applicable.
this is both a long term and short term solution. The issue is that far too many of the poor are in countries with little or no respect of private property rights. These people stay poor because they and their property is not protected.
nothing you give them will mean anything when someone else can simply take it because of their position of power. we see this everyday, aid goes to the powerful except for a few select media staged events.
all comes back to the rule of law, not the rule of man.
Please correct me if I misunderstood this, but are you seriously suggesting that the way we solve problems of poverty is to just get rid of the poor people?
Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve. If you want it to work it needs 3 things:
1) Free Education
2) High Taxes
3) Strong Unions
Sounds leftist? It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live. This and a good explanation can be found in "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? (TEDxOslo)"
why do you need to destroy the wealthy to help the poor? the world isn't a zero sum game.
Why not enable the poor to produce more wealth, by up-skilling and by making entrepreneurship easier and less risky? A poor person today is trapped in a job they cannot afford to leave for education/up-skilling. A poor person today cannot start a new business because they cannot afford the capital nor the risk.
If instead of a higher minimum wage, you could have a program where a poor person could apply for funds to either up-skill via some sort of education program at an institution, or a loan for a new business, they would probably do much better than raising the minimum wage.
How do we pull up the poor when the elites filter the entire economy through their pockets?
If the goal is to pull everyone out of poverty, is there a way to accelerate the process? I'd say, yes. Predicate the elites selling their people's labor to wealthier powers on improving labor's situation in that country. They are not doing it on their own, at least not fast as they could.
I think we can help both the poor people in the US and everywhere else. We just need to squeeze the top a bit harder.
And I mean actual education, like khans academy, not fake education, like American public schools (politically correct obedience training)
When 1% of the population hordes 50% of the wealth through nepotism, cronyism, monopolies, oligopolies, and bribing politicians, the solution to poverty is obvious. Guillotines.
The markets can't be free when bribery, nepotism, cronyism, monopoly and oligopoly dominate them. Free the markets from the cartels of privilege.
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