How to eliminate poverty.

This discussion is an attempt to induce from the facts how a 1st world country could socio-economically eliminate poverty. Every political group believes that eliminating poverty is a good idea.

Modern civilisation can easily eliminate poverty that is not caused by crime or accidents as the gdp per capita indicates. It can also reduce crime considerably, but that discussion can take place in another thread. Commonly in this thread people make irresponsible sweeping assumptions about other posters, this is due to petty foibles which are irrational ideas you have. Ask other posters questions before making sweeping assumptions, for instance I sound very much like a socialist, I am not I am a realist, at this point socialists will believe that I am insulting socialism and saying it is not realistic. I am a realist so you must prove to me the merits of your argument and cannot make any sweeping assumptions. Here is a brief list of things which would decrease poverty.

Maintenance of the market economy. Market economies are much more efficient than planned economies.

Minimum wage respective of what funds a person needs to keep themselves out of poverty. This could be in the form of food stamps and state accomodation and any money a person can earn above minimum wage will be in the form of money. No one will get state accomodation unless they have a job. The state will seek to make the accomodation as economical as possible whilst staying clear of anything that might cause crime or poverty.

Welfare will only go to under 16s, this will be extensive and be aimed entirely at ensuring the person can get a job when they have finnished their education. Parents will not get paid for having children, the money will go to the children to ensure the parents spend the money on their children.

Schools will be privatised.

A good idea would be to train orphans from infancy to work in special forces and as elite pilots as a special warrior-class in the military. Some people might disagree with this.

The government will privatise it's job centres and job advertising/searching agencies.

Hospitals will be privatised.

Insurance companies will be privatised and everyone with a job must pay a small sum of salary to insurance

Tax should be decreased.

The only way to eliminate poverty for group A is to corral those who are poor or that become poor through failure, etc. into a different group B.

Group A will invariably decide that group B should not be able to just sit around and be poor.  Henceforth, slavery.  However, in our modern society, we can't say that word in that context.  Henceforth, military recruiting.

>>2
In a 1st world country people are poor because they won't look after themselves, usually due to mental illness or because they just cant be botherred to settle into a job becuase they prefer to be a gangsta or whatever.

It is physically possible for everyone to get a job and look after themselves, however due to crime and accidents it is impossible. However it is possible to prevent people being institutionally in poverty, by changing policies and to reduce crime and accidents substantially.

>>3


I hope you get shot by a fucking "gangsta", you fucking racist.

>>4
I hope all people in your country willing to speak the truth get shot and you're left with a bunch of political correct but completely useless idiots like yourself. Enjoy living with your beloved gangsters and watching your country degenerate into a shithole then.

>>1
Fuck private schools. The idea is horseshit, it will only widen gaps between rich and poor.  Do you think any good school wants poor trash making the white middle class girls uncomfortable? Poor kids will get rejected from enrollment, they can go deal crack.

Privatizing Hospitals, EVEN BETTER, now doctors only have to treat the clean, rich, well off patients who come in, and can deny service to anyone for any reason at all. Whereas in other situations thats all fine and good, but in the medical field people fucking die if they don't get treated.  I dunno, letting people die because they can't pay you money up front seems unethical to me, I guess I'm a bleeding heart. 

Children get the money? Oh great, I'm sure a 5 year old has the ability to know how to support him/herself with that money.

Military/Warrior Class? We already have that, its the recruiting scheme already used, "Find poor black/latin kid and get him to join the Armed Forces" Not only does it allow for the conduction of foreign adventures to fatten the pockets of lockheed martin, it also gets said black/latino kids killed! Hooray!

Have you ever PAID insurance? Are you out of your mind? Government already forces you to have car insurance, and this government-corporate team is the most glaring example I can think of as contradiction of the "free-market" America loves. Fuck insurance, its just like a tax, but it helps out some douchebag corporation that won't fucking cough up when you get hurt.  I have no fucking love for that beautiful piece of capitalism, I'd rather it wither and die will the repeal of insurance laws.


I never expect businesses to be ethical, thats why we have to imprison Enron executives and have the SEC.  Government may not be as clean and ethical as we'd like it to be, but at least profit is not in it's mission statement.

Libertarians, lol, they pop a chubby whenever anyone says PRIVATIZE.

>>6
Children get money = they will have nice fortune to star with when they're adults. Don't you realise that?

>>6
I'd like you to suggest better alternative then. One that's not tax heavy nor freedom invasive. I don't agree with his all points, but most are realistic atleast. Stop dreaming and wake up. This is real world and people die anyway. That's what you need to accept and it's not like anyone prohibits you from supporting poor people. Get off your ass and go help poor if you really care about them. I maybe "heartless" capitalist by your definition, but I've fed many beggars and given my more unfortunate friends much stuff for free. I bet you haven't even done that.

>>7

That's a pipe dream and you know it. The plans you make won't work in a society that is purposefully dumbed down and poisoned by corporations who have enough money to feed their kids right and send them to expensive schools.

The problem with your idea is that it's pretty much already happening to shitty results.

>>6
Poor people do not send their kids to private school because they have to pay for it under a planned economy and cannot afford the right to have an education system that must compete in a market economy. Giving children money that their parents can used to send them to a private school is every responsible parent's dream. Private enterprises are inherantly non-discriminative as otherwise they would unnecessarily lose money. In order to eliminate poverty all children will have an education, the market system means that there will always be schools willing to take the cash grant for taking in another pupil.

Everyone will have insurance, privatised hospitals get cash from insurers for treating citizens. Worst case scenario, even though a child gets free education and mentorring in how to make a living for some reason they can not even get a job flipping burgers in a 1st world economy and cannot afford insurance. The hospital assumes this person has insurance and treats him, when they find out he does not have insurance he is taken to court and must work as a hospital cleaner to pay off his debt. The hospital of course will be extremely efficient due to the all pervasive justice system and the pressures of a market economy.

That's right, give the child the money. It is illegal for a kid to buy alcohol, so why give the parents the child's money? If we are to eliminate poverty a heavy crack down on irresponsible parents is an absolute neccesity. You cannot eliminate institutional poverty and still let people parent their childrne without ensuring they are responsible.

No, the process would be indiscriminate of race gender and physical ability, they would be trained from infancy to be specialists, they would be a vital resource to the military that few other nations could match and with skills few other civilians would possess. They would be free to leave of course since they would be citizens, but I doubt many will give up their lifestyle.

You would be free to have insurance or not, but since you would most likely find yourself in debt some time in your life if you do not have insurance, everyone would decide to get insurance. You would be free to select from a variety of insurance companies, if you feel one is screwing you over, you simply withdraw your application and start paying the other company.

Good, don't expect businesses to be ethical. Criticise them like you're marx on methamphetamine. The more effective the justice system, the more liberty there is. However never forget that businesses are a liberty and a right, people should have as much economic freedom as possible.

I have the determination of an extremist, but as you can see I have rationally answerred all your queries and am acknowledging your criticism. My determination comes from the obvious and irrefutable fact that someone will always be in control of aspects of our society and the more we can control our own lives the better, especially our money.

A private account only accessible by the child when they reach 18 and get a SS# might work.

Insurance is privatized, but heavily regulated, and companies need plenty of capital in hand to start an insurance company, not just credit. 

Making insurance NOT mandatory would be better.  Saving a couple hundred per month to spend on car repairs makes a lot more sense than paying the price of the vehicle several times over "just in case" something happens, only to raise the price when it does.

Most privatization would be heavily regulated and standardized anyway, so aside from higher costs there's not much else to come out from it.

So how are you going to implement your plan? kill all those selfish rich cat and idiotcrat with a billhook and declare yourself king?

The way to eliminate poverty is to stop giving people handouts and let them learn to take care of themselves, generally.

It is better to teach a man to fish, than to give him a fish.

Freedom and Capitalism are the best solutions to poverty, not government handouts or socialism.

The best way to end povety is to kill all poor people.

>>13
The trouble is not everyone knows how to look after themselves, my idea is to ensure children know how to look after themselves. So when they are 18 they will get a job and won't have to pay extra tax for welfare for lazy adults.

>>12
This is just a web forum. Just a couple of ideas in their primordial stages. I'm not really botherred to actually do anything to make the world a better place, yet.

>>11
The thing is the welfare needs to be spent on the child, not when the child is an adult. Insurance companies by all means would have to be regulated to preserve justice, but they should not be subsidised otherwise it will corrupt the economy, make it lopsided and open a gateway for corruption. I don't believe anything should be mandatory except not committing crime, the reason being that people themselves are the best judges of their personal balance between whether the state interferes with their lives and whether the state makes their lives easier. For instance ID cards are pointless and cumbersome for people who rarely travel, whereas a frequent traveller or member of a security institution will want an ID card to smooth over all the bureaucratic situations they will find themselves in.

Privatisation will see the seperations of the state from a segment of the economy and perhaps this will increase the costs of preserving justice. However the state no longer has to make sure that the institution is working as efficiently as possible, due to competition the business will automatically be efficient or those concerned will lose money or perhaps even the business will shut down. Also the seperation of the state from the economy means that it is more difficult for corruption to take place and provides an incentive for rival companies to criticise each other, the free press will be more likely to reveal corruption and the market economy to penalise inefficient, corrupt and dangerous institutions. This happenned to Nestle and Coke. The pepsi company paid Indian media companies to be fiercely critical of a coca cola plant using meager water reserves, in their bid to capture the indian market. Also various sweet companies in Malaysia paid off the free press to reveal how Nestle was giving out free milk powder to mothers who have just given birth so their breast milk is not used and their breasts shrivel making them dependant on their milk powder. There is a lot of controversy as to whether Coca Cola or Nestle were malicious, but this controversy only points out the extreme criticism a competitive free market generates. God forbid that any coorporation do anything blatantly criminal, it's rival companies and the media will swarm all over it like vultures and hyenas over an injured calf.

WTF!

Helping the poor is based on one assumption, that the poor are good people.  Shit I know tons of poor people that are assholes and I sure as hell hope they stay poor. 

Hands off people's homes and personal, consesnsual behavior. Hands ON the schools! Education is the great leveller. On the other hand education only works so far, and there are other influences in the social and popualar culture that can harm children's minds. In such a situation you Americans can have a lot to gain by letting people take own responsibility and letting mercantile laws apply, but you have an equal amount to lose. Here in Sweden our lazy cultural character and the mollyfying effect of welfare has rendered everyone unmotivated, so now everybody has equally poor education. I think private schools and hospitals are almost illegal here...

>>17
Best to give children a free education, yes, but it is best to keep the government's hands off schools. The solution is obvious and can be induced. Give the kids cash grants to go to private schools which they pay back in tax when they start work, because they won't start work unless they have an education. Public school is synonymous with stupid rowdy cunt-tards for a reason, because they are all state run shit piles which get as much funding as any private school, but are run like a communist bread factory.

What about crappy schools that are crap but still allow kids to pay for them?

"Fuck private schools. The idea is horseshit, it will only widen gaps between rich and poor.  Do you think any good school wants poor trash making the white middle class girls uncomfortable? Poor kids will get rejected from enrollment, they can go deal crack."

There are plenty of compelling statistics and arguments for private schools.  I shouldn't have to list them.  Private schools do a better job at educating the poor, and thus contribute to eliminating the vicious cycle of poverty.

"Privatizing Hospitals, EVEN BETTER, now doctors only have to treat the clean, rich, well off patients who come in, and can deny service to anyone for any reason at all. "

Yeah, we should stick guns to the doctors heads and force them to heal people.  You commies make me want to go shoot something... god. 

"Have you ever PAID insurance? Are you out of your mind? Government already forces you to have car insurance, and this government-corporate team is the most glaring example I can think of as contradiction of the "free-market" America loves. Fuck insurance, its just like a tax, but it helps out some douchebag corporation that won't fucking cough up when you get hurt.  I have no fucking love for that beautiful piece of capitalism, I'd rather it wither and die will the repeal of insurance laws."

Insurance laws and government in general don't sound like Capitalism, or the free market.  Maybe you should be attacking government, and calling for the repeal of those laws, rather than dissing Capitalism?

Capitalism and the free market, ideologically, are the main ideas standing between you, and mandatory taxation for a whole list of stupid programs which you may or may not want to pay for. 


"I never expect businesses to be ethical, thats why we have to imprison Enron executives and have the SEC.  Government may not be as clean and ethical as we'd like it to be, but at least profit is not in it's mission statement."

What is wrong with profit?

"Libertarians, lol, they pop a chubby whenever anyone says PRIVATIZE."

As opposed to commies who 'pop a chubby' whenever some fat washington bureaucrat in bed with god knows how many corporations legislates some law or new tax that basically funnels more money into the pockets of the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes?

Keep voting Democrat, it's helping quite a lot!

>>20
I already replied to him, I am the OP. See >>10.

He wasn't implying we should force doctors to heal patients, just that we should tax people with the most money so people who cannot afford treatment can get treatment through tax-funded healthcare. The trouble is that it doesn't prevent poverty, it just white washes it. The homeless drunkard is just going to shoot up more heroine again and waste more tax dollars, the illegal immigrant pregnant mother will not start paying insurance or tax after she is given a caesarian section etc..

The government exists to preserve liberty by enforcing justice. Just like banks are not allowed to suddenly close someone's account and keep all their money, insurance companies should not be allowed to scam their customers.

A good idea would be to train orphans from infancy to work in special forces and as elite pilots as a special warrior-class in the military. Some people might disagree with this.

wtf?

>>22
You heard me.

>>22
Don't get it? Simple and it would work, although ofcourse it should be voluntary. I don't think it should be restricted to kids either. Let the poor and unexployed earn their money by serving their country. Though technically we already have army like that.

>>24
Do you think kids want to go to school? Kid's only rights are their human rights, they get political rights once they turn citizens and it is citizen's job to turn them into citizens. The military is in dire need of personnel trained from infancy in certain tasks to give us further superiority over forces we only have a technological advantage over. They would receive training no ordinary civilian would ever expect.

It's a win win situation!

>>25
Do you think kids/people want to starve? They join if they don't and if they don't want to then let them starve. Simple and no fascism involved. Also need not to use taxes to catch them or anything like that. Just have enlistment office and posters.

>>22

lol.  I was just about to say that.  You have rendered my comment useless, but I will say it anyway.

WTF does raising military orphans have to do with eliminating poverty?

I'd love to see this justice you speak of, Insurance is still a ripoff. Corporations do all kinds of fucking shit that doesn't get checked by our beautiful justice system, as the amount of money you have is inversely porportional to how the court can hurt you.
 
Private schools do have higher educational outputs, but they cost more, does the average poor person have the fucking money to pay to educate their kids when they could just have them commit crimes?  Vouchers, ok, let's see how this works....Everyone gets paid a $2000 voucher that they have to pay back in taxes...Since schools are privatized, they can charge whatever they want, so School A charges $1500 for tuition, and School B charges $5000 for tuition...which school will provide better education and which school will the poor kid go to? What about those schools that have a religious hue to them? If I hear "government regulates voucher money" or "government enforces Aff Action for poor people" you're talking socialism.

Medical care is the biggest domestic issue in the US right now, one of the huge problems is how fucking defunct and corrupt the FDA is, we need a better arbitrary department in it's place.  Doctors get paid a lot, but they deserve it for their schooling, malpractice insurance shouldn't be so neccessary for doctors.
Pharmacutical companies make too much fucking money and the FDA protects their asses, only solution I know of is for someone to start a drug company that sells said drugs for less.
We need a state-managed drug retailer, so those pharmacists can stop denying people birth control based on their religious beliefs.

Military is a great avenue I believe, poor people with no where to go are lucky to have this option open, but it shouldn't be so damn life-threatening, less foreign adventures imo.

Capitalism isn't all that great when the institutions that "promote" capitalism are simply protecting Corporations that exercise tactics that are contrary the the capitalist mindset.

The problem with just having rival companies and a free press to stamp out corruption and evil practices is that it hasn't happened.  We have had a free press since the revolution, and corporations have slandered each other from the dawn of their existence, but they all wised up.  The "free press" is not free anymore, due to the costs of running businesses and the fact that the only source of revenue is to advertise or speak favorably of some product or corp.  MULTIPLE "free presses" give conflicting information of said products, making the press less trusted in the minds of the people.  Corporations know that competition is hard for profits, so they merge and monopolize, which makes controlling the market easier for them, and it also eliminates whistle-blowers from former rivals.
If a solution is avaliable to this, I don't know of it.  Perhaps, if anything, government should have less of a hand in business, and a tax-funded news service should be established, with true democratic administration of it. Oh, and the FCC should suck a fat one.

>>26
I don't see the logic. Surely you know that one difference between children and adults is that adults should no better and children cannot know better as they haven't been brought up yet. The threat of starvation does little to get kids to realise they need to go and find an orphanage since many homeless kids may not even know what an orphanage is or not know how to get to one, the kids may be being coerced by an adult and because they have not been embued with a sense of liberty will assume there is nothing wrong with the adult who is abusing them. Adults on the other hand should by their point know what a job is and how to get one and the threat of starvation is a sound deterant.

>>26-27
Children who have a troubled childhood are more likely to suffer from disillusionments, have a poor education and may have begun to slip into a life of crime. Maybe the idea of putting them into the military to be trained into high-skill roles from infancy is a silly idea, scratch that and just have them put in an boarding-school-orphanage.

>>28
You are discussing many problems in our current system and of course I agree that the more justice the better. A more productive line of discussion would be which system enacts more rational policies and makes corruption difficult. It is very difficult for a person with little economic clout to take on a huge corporation, but if their evidence is sound they can go to rival corporations and media companies, or they could simply go to the police and press charges.

A more sound amount of cash to spend on a pupil per annum would be $7000. Let's say we have a typical "I want state vouchers" school which charges the $7000 and an expensive private school which charges $10000 per pupil per annum. Under state-school conditions absolutely no child with lower-middle class parents could afford to send their kids to private school unless they have 1 kid and live in a trailer, now it is an open market, the voucher reduces the cost to $3000 per annum which is about the amount in tax they save not having to pay welfare in this system anyway. These schools of course would have to compete with one another in a free market reducing corruption.

Drug companies are less of an industry and more of an information market, claiming property rights on the new drugs they discover and the methods used to produce the complex chemicals needed. It is simply easier in the technology market for competing groups to share research and this is often encouraged in medical research for ethical reasons, this results in a monopoly with groups so intertwined they all get a cut from selling their intellectual property and being a monopoly their charges tend to be very high. It has little to do with the government beyond how much they can charge. I agree that this is one of those little nitches in capitalism that need to be watched out for, the solution is obviously for the groups the be seperated and to charge for the work they have done individually. The different labs will charge as low as possible to deter the people they are selling their intellectual property to from simply doing the research themselves. Everytime someone makes a discovery there will be an auction to determine how much will be paid to reveal the research to the economy. I've just come up with this idea out of the blue, so there is probably something wrong with it, but like I said this is just a bunch of ideas in their primoridal stage.

*yawn*

Corporations know that a monopoly = cash and the less competition the better, however individuals in a corporation know they can make a lot of money competing with a bloated morass. The capitalist system really depends on how hot it is at the top and how much pressure is on people who own property to making the right investments, grow their roots into every crevise of the economy etc..

adults should know better****

other typos are just typoes and do not reflect on my intelligence etc.

I do not know what it is like in america because i have never been there. But in my country no one is homeless if they dont want to be, we have emergency housing and shelter and such. The only homeless people are the mentally ill who are well enough to decide not to be in a home. Its is much the same across all of Europe.

The real poverty is in the third world, mostly in asia and south america, not africa as popular culture would have you believe. The real way to solve this problem is not by giving people money, im sure they would like it but what would they do when the money runs out? What should be done is dropping trade barriers and giving producers a decent price for their goods. Take coffee, fair trade coffee is 15% more for me than the one i use to buy, but for those farming it in poverty its a world of difference and they are no longer in poverty.

Drop the debt(virtual slavery), make free trade free and westerners stop being so greedy.

>>31
Abso-fucking-lutely true, we need to export our most precious product, liberty. Greed is good unless it finds it's way outside the bounds of justice, then it becomes COMMUNISM. We have our liberty, now we need more justice, so those we trade with can have more liberty. I can imagine a world completely occupied by the US, a world without borders where people can dance hand in hand and no man has to stamp on the face of another. It's a long way off, but we're heading in the right direction.

"It's a long way off, but we're heading in the right direction." Um, Israel is in dire straits, your country is targeted by all muslim extremists in the world due to that evangelical you allowed into the White House even though he pissed on the fundaments of your country just by accepting office. Then there's medicare, the housing market, oil, growing poverty, obesity, a crusade on drugs, anti-gay hatecrime is on the up (last time I checked), a diminishing middle class, a left tethered to pacifists and socialists, a right tied to bigots, homophobes and evangelicals and you may have heard about Iran making a nuke. You are not going in the right direction. You need to start over, beause the last three presidents have been sub-idiots.

How The World Bank is using technology and open development to help eradicate poverty : http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/09/the-world-banks-chief-innovation-officer-on-technology-open-development-and-reducing-world-poverty

Liberty is a meaningless crock of shit, like 'love' and 'belief'.

>Every political group believes that eliminating poverty is a good idea.
Do you actually believe this?

Poverty is needed to keep people going to work every morning.

Thats the kind of states the fmi is desperately trying to erradicate.

Plato, the republic. Also, pussies.
:-)

Poverty is a moral problem, not an economic one.

Having a growing (rather than falling or non-existent) middle-class generally sees a fall in poverty levels within a state. So from that perspective, poverty is socio-economic.