Day 1107 – How to End Poverty – Three Simple Words

Monday, January 29, 2024

Remember the Steve Martin routine – “How to make a million dollars and never pay taxes?”

He said you need to know two simple words.*

To end poverty you need three.

I was reminded of all this by two things I saw on the font of all wisdom for people my age – Facebook.

Younger people use X or Tiktok.

So three simple words to end poverty, but first what was it that I saw on Facebook that caused me to think about this? Jon Stewart and a seperate thing about making $14.00 an hour.

Let’s start with $14 an hour. The premise was you make $14 an hour. You had a kid and your rent was $1000.00 a month. Well, the math says that you have to choose between food and rent. Landlord evicts you. You can only take what you can put in your car. The sheriff finds you sleeping in your car, calls child services, takes the kid. Downward spiral.

With Jon Stewart’s return to The Daiy Show I saw a thing where he played video clips of Fox hosts saying things about the government and sarcastically asking, “What do you think the government should do?” and then positing various things like health care and rent help, etc. All of which Stewart said, “yes” that’s what “we” as a government should do.

This gets into that discussion of socialism and capitalism. Socialism is the government providing services, like building roads, giving money to corportations, and providing health care to those who need it.

Capitalism is people or companies making money.

The dream is that everyne can make enough money to live. The truth is that is not true. 

So what to do? Three simple words. These three simple words, if enacted, would end poverty instantly. Not only that it would rasie the standard of living, make us as a country healthier, and would be cheaper than what we are currently doing.

What are those three simple words you ask? Well, let me ask you, “What is the root cause of poverty?”

The root cause of poverty is that people don’t have enough to live. Don’t have enough what? Well, in a modern society that would be money. In older times it might be food to grow or animals to kill to eat, but neighbors would not take kindly to hunting parties slaughtering on their property or growing corn in their backyard, so it’s money.

So let me ask you, “if the root cause of poverty is people don’t have enough money what could the government do about that?”

What?

What?

Did I hear you say, “Give People Money”?

Bingo. Now you know the three simple words.

But…but…but.

Actually, there have been multiple studies that show that this is cheaper than the alternatives.

This isn’t rocket science. Think about the $14/hour example. The problem here is that a person can’t feed their family and put a roof over their head. Forget whose fault it is. That doesn’t matter. What does this person need? Money for food or rent – about $1,000 a month, maybe $2,000 when you think about dentists, doctors, medicine. Let’s say the sheriif takes the kid, arrests the person in the car and throws them in jail. How much is that going to cost? The jail business in Arizona was charging several hundred dollars a person a day if I remember correctly, and child services for the kid? I’m guessing you are looking at a burden on the government, and therefore the taxpayer, of ten grand a month easy. 

So what’s the cheaper way to go?

Give People Money.

Oh I know, they may go buy drugs, booze, and lottery tickets.

Hey, here’s an idea. Maybe, we don’t give them the money cash but instead provide help like free clinics for health care, and food stamps for … um … food. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Or rent help?

Lots of 18 year olds come out of foster care and end up in jail shortly thereafter. Maybe, we could help them? One idea was to put dorms near community colleges for young folks struggling to get a start in life. And, oh yeah, give them education at that community college. 

Home Depot is running ads saying there are 400,000 jobs in the trades that need to be filled. Maybe, the community colleges could teach trades?

We also know that there is a pilot and air traffic controller shortage and it’s huge and it’s going to get worse. Maybe, the Republican idea to cut government funding for programs in those areas isn’t a good one? Maybe, if we want enough pilots and air traffic controllers we, the government, should help out? We’ve got an air traffic controller school that graduates 1,800 potential controllers a year. The problem is that’s not enough bodies. But Republicans want to cut funding to the FAA, which means that school will have to shut down. Maybe, giving the FAA more money so they can expand the school would be a better solution?

Then there’s the problem at the border. Maybe, we should fund border security and not do everything we can to stymie the situation? But then Republicans and Trump would not have this as an issue. I mean Joe Biden took away their economic bitching because the economy is doing well so they had to switch to the border. One thing I saw said, “Razor wire doesn’t hurt you if you don’t try to climb over it.” To which I say, “You wouldn’t need the razor wire if you passed a sane (even conservative ) border security bill, like the one before congress now. But no, can’t have that, what would Republicans complain about? Better to bring legal action to make the border more chaotic and try impeach the Homeland Security Secretary for doing his job, which you’ve done all you can to stymie.

Then there’s drug prices. Maybe we should stop having a middleman set prices on drugs and maybe we should have the government stop paying these people and the drug companies and also having the drug companies charge people exorbitant amounts? Maybe we should let the market decide the prices? What’s that called? Oh yeah, capitalism. And maybe we should throw in a touch of socialism by not allowing drug makers to play games with patents so they can keep extending the life of a drug? I mean I already suggested getting rid of the socialism of having the government pay the rug companies so this is not a wash but actually a win because it would cost less, a whole lot less.

Health care? Provide it. Why? it’s cheaper than letting people get sick and go to the ER.

So to summarize – Give people money who need it.It’s cheaper than the alternatives. Provide services to people who need it. It’s cheaper than waiting til the last minute and creating a crisis. Provide childcare and education because then people will be more productive and less a drag on society.

Three Simple Words.

*How to make a million dollars and never pay taxes: 1) make a million dollars, 2) Don’t pay the tax. When the IRS shows up remember these two simple words, “I forgot.”