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How is poverty best eliminated?

What of the following does the best for eliminating poverty in the world?

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US Conservative

US Conservative

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What works best to eliminate poverty? Multiple options are available.
Crony%20Capitalism%20Intellectual%20Takeout.jpg
 
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Work hard, be responsible and use your money wisely. No government is going to eliminate poverty by offering handouts. It's up to the individual.
 
The last however many centuries of human history tend to suggest that it is freeing up the economic abilities of the individual.
 
The economy is a giant trading pool. The more accessible that trading pool becomes, the more people will get involved in it.

However, bringing people into the pool requires investment; acquiring the financial and professional skills to be a contributing member of the economy takes money and time that majority of poor people don't have the resources or knowledge to accrue. That's why poverty is generational and why we (used to have) a progressive taxation system that made investments in public education and infrastructure. If families can't make it to the economy, we can bring the economy to them.

In theory, all rich people favour bringing more people into the trading pool because it expands opportunity for capital investment. In practice, they loathe the idea of progressive taxation or paying employees a living wage. Then the Reagan Administration got the brilliant idea that there was no need to tax rich people or have a minimum wage because if you borrowed money from foreign markets to maintain education and infrastructure and military might, then rich people would use the windfall in tax breaks to create an economy so massive that even at much lower effective tax rates there would be more than enough to pay back everything America had borrowed.

Don't worry. The wind fall is coming.

Work hard, be responsible and use your money wisely. No government is going to eliminate poverty by offering handouts. It's up to the individual.
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... the nations of the European Union have been doing it for 30 years. 6% poverty versus 20% poverty.
 
Morality Games said:
The economy is a giant trading pool. The more accessible that trading pool becomes, the more people will get involved in it.

However, bringing people into the pool requires investment; acquiring the financial and professional skills to be a contributing member of the economy takes money and time that majority of poor people don't have the resources or knowledge to accrue. That's why poverty is generational and why we (used to have) a progressive taxation system that made investments in public education and infrastructure. If families can't make it to the economy, we can bring the economy to them.

In theory, all rich people favour bringing more people into the trading pool because it expands opportunity for capital investment. In practice, they loathe the idea of progressive taxation or paying employees a living wage. Then the Reagan Administration got the brilliant idea that there was no need to tax rich people because if you borrowed money from foreign markets to maintain education and infrastructure, then rich people would use the windfall in tax breaks to create an economy so massive that even with much lower effective tax rates there would be more than enough to pay back everything America had borrowed.

Don't worry. The wind fall is coming.



... the nations of the European Union have been doing it for 30 years. 6% poverty versus 20% poverty.
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The thread asked for complete elimination of poverty :p

(I'm not sure that's possible)
 
Well the U.S. became a superpower and reached economic prosperity in the 1950s and 60s because of a giant government spending program called WWII.
 
Morality Games said:
The economy is a giant trading pool. The more accessible that trading pool becomes, the more people will get involved in it.

However, bringing people into the pool requires investment; acquiring the financial and professional skills to be a contributing member of the economy takes money and time that majority of poor people don't have the resources or knowledge to accrue. That's why poverty is generational and why we (used to have) a progressive taxation system that made investments in public education and infrastructure. If families can't make it to the economy, we can bring the economy to them.

In theory, all rich people favour bringing more people into the trading pool because it expands opportunity for capital investment. In practice, they loathe the idea of progressive taxation or paying employees a living wage. Then the Reagan Administration got the brilliant idea that there was no need to tax rich people or have a minimum wage because if you borrowed money from foreign markets to maintain education and infrastructure and military might, then rich people would use the windfall in tax breaks to create an economy so massive that even at much lower effective tax rates there would be more than enough to pay back everything America had borrowed.
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Not only have tax revenues gone up since we lowered nominal rates, but the tax code has become more progressive - our tax code now leans more heavily on upper income earners as a share of revenue than any other nation in the OECD.

Additionally, the "bring the economy to them" approach has grown and overgrown. We now spend more than a trillion dollars a year on 126 separate poverty reduction programs. If we just divvied up the money we spent on the poor and gave it to them, there would be zero poverty in the US.

... the nations of the European Union have been doing it for 30 years. 6% poverty versus 20% poverty.
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Yeah. It's handy when you can just re-define poverty. In China, for example, if you make $5 a day, you're part of the middle class.

The average poor american lives in a house the size of the average european middle class.
 
Carjosse said:
Well the U.S. became a superpower and reached economic prosperity in the 1950s and 60s because of a giant government spending program called WWII.
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That is incorrect, actually. The economy took off after we cut the federal budget by 75% in the years following WWII, despite universal predictions of disaster from the keynesian crowd.
 
You can't eliminate poverty, but history and the experience of many nations has shown time and time again that you can reduce the poverty rate considerably with a combination of a market economy with some safety nets, free trade, market oversight, labor and environmental protections, and a pro-business environment.
 
cpwill said:
That is incorrect, actually. The economy took off after we cut the federal budget by 75% in the years following WWII, despite universal predictions of disaster from the keynesian crowd.
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Kind of a unique scenario though. Following World War II we had the only functional manufacturing infrastructure left as Europe and Asia had largely been bombed out.
 
I don't know.

However, I suspect that the following might help:
Ensure as few regulations as possible are in place. The more regulations, the higher your cost to comply, and the lower your profit, which means slower expansion of business and thus fewer jobs created.
Ensure taxes are as low as can be. The lower taxes are, the more money is available for expansion and hiring.

Of course the above two assume that a business owner is not going to waste money on unreasonably high salaries for a few employees and themselves, instead of hiring more. In theory however, if the market is allowed a reasonable amount of freedom, businesses with that kind of BS happening will not be able to compete with those who avoid it. Then there's always the stock option idea - give employees stocks instead of part of their pay, they have a stake in the business, then if the business goes well, they effectively get paid more.

There's a immense amount of interlocking parts to the economy, poverty being one result, and I'm not sure even trained economists can do much more than analyze data which simply isn't comprehensive enough to show the whole picture.

Sometimes I wonder if trying is worse than getting out of the way as much as possible and letting people do their thing.
 
Carjosse said:
Well the U.S. became a superpower and reached economic prosperity in the 1950s and 60s because of a giant government spending program called WWII.
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Actually, that's a myth. WWII created very low standards of living. The GDP increased, sure, but that is definitely not a legitimate measurement of economic prosperity. After WWII ended along with the sharp decline in spending that came with it...then the economy bounced back and became incredibly powerful.

The Great Depression Was Ended by the End of World War II, Not the Start of It - Forbes
 
Carjosse said:
Well the U.S. became a superpower and reached economic prosperity in the 1950s and 60s because of a giant government spending program called WWII.
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No it did not, it largely became that way by ramping up its industrial capacity in ww2, and THEN rebuilding much of the world destroyed in that same war. If it was just govt spending the new deal would have actually worked.
 
We will never "eliminate" poverty unless we simply give enough of a handout that everyone is raised out of poverty. Sadly their is a percentage of the population that simply are not willing to do for themselves, I know one of these persons firsthand. Some people are so lazy that they would rather go homeless and hungry than hold down a job.

I do not think eliminating poverty should be the goal but instead we should be insuring that those that are willing to put forth the effort to raise themselves out of poverty have the ability to do so. Some deserve to live in poverty and those people should remain in poverty.

Most people do not want to live in poverty and plenty of those that do are hardworking they simply do not know or understand how to pull themselves out or they have an underlying issue that causes them to remain in poverty (addiction, mental illness, ect). So I do not think a single approach will fix the problem, each case is different.

I personally feel that if a person works a job, any job, for enough hours (we will say 60 for argument sake) that they should make enough to afford basic needs. Sadly that is not the case for most unskilled labor in this country and someone has to do those jobs. However I think the answer is going to be complex and not a simple fix. I believe we need to take a step back and rethink how wealth is earned and given in this world from top to bottom. I feel we have a very unfair system in place that needs to be reworked.
 
US Conservative said:
What works best to eliminate poverty? Multiple options are available.
Crony%20Capitalism%20Intellectual%20Takeout.jpg
Click to expand...

I believe your best answer would be to look at the nations that have the lowest levels of poverty, and see what they are doing - and copy what they do as best we can. Then look at the nations with the highest levels of poverty and see what they are doing - and don't do what they do.

You know where this is going, don't you?

Yes, you do - because the nations with the lowest levels of poverty are the socialized first-world democracies...whereas the nations with the highest levels of poverty are those nations with small governments, low effective taxes, and weak regulation.

And as we can see by the nations of the world, what works best is that "Goldilocks level" of strong government, high effective taxation, and strong regulation, all balanced by free enterprise, and by providing as much assistance to small businesses to help them succeed as we can. How do we determine the balance? By keeping government OUT of places where the profit motive rules i.e. the free market, and also by keeping Big Business OUT of places where the profit motive does not belong (like schools, prisons, and other public services).

America once understood this...until some went on a "privatize everything" rant.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Yes, you do - because the nations with the lowest levels of poverty are the socialized first-world democracies...whereas the nations with the highest levels of poverty are those nations with small governments, low effective taxes, and weak regulation.
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"Socialized" nations do not have the worlds poor floating there on tires. The US does. How do you explain this?
 
cpwill said:
Not only have tax revenues gone up since we lowered nominal rates, but the tax code has become more progressive - our tax code now leans more heavily on upper income earners as a share of revenue than any other nation in the OECD.

Additionally, the "bring the economy to them" approach has grown and overgrown. We now spend more than a trillion dollars a year on 126 separate poverty reduction programs. If we just divvied up the money we spent on the poor and gave it to them, there would be zero poverty in the US.



Yeah. It's handy when you can just re-define poverty. In China, for example, if you make $5 a day, you're part of the middle class.

The average poor american lives in a house the size of the average european middle class.
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Point 1: I don't know why you are even talking to me about this. You *know* I'm just going to say something like, "Indeed. 7% tax rate for a company like Apple that is heavily, heavily reliant on the United States for infrastructure, security, and legal assistance is definitely a defining example of progressive taxation." The bottom line is that Apple has gotten more out of its relationship with the people of the United States and its government than we've gotten out of Apple. It's a mostly one sided relationship.

Progressive taxation is gutted and dead. The right-wing has lost any vigorous interest in reforming the tax code because the situation they have now will certainly be better than any Grand Bargain tax reform they can wring out of the Democrats.

Point 2: And my family owns (or has owned) a meagre number of acres that would be worth millions in England. When you have a third of the population of the United States in a territory the size of Iowa, you wouldn't expect to have a very large house. Just because they're challenged when it comes to a specific resource doesn't say anything about their overall living standards or quality of life.
 
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To those who voted for both unions and Freedom from coercion/association, I'd be interested in hearing how you came to this seemingly contradictory conclusion.
 
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