For the longest time I've been listening to the voices of the right wing talking about the poverty trap and I must confess that every time the subject would come up, I wold somewhat dismiss it as fear mongering. That being said, lately I'm starting to see the validity in the argument, and how the current american safety net is actually one of the reasons why we've not moved past the hurdle.

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It comes down to incentives

We can break it down, flip it upside down, talk about racial tensions, etc, but at the end of the day it really just comes down to the system of incentives. In other words, if people think it's better to stay impoverished to be able to secure their benefits, then they will.

The idea that people are poor because they want to be, or because they are lazy, is both wrong and in my opinion socially destructive. Nobody who is of a sound mind wants to be poor, but it's hard for someone who is living in scarcity to be able to think long term and the system that is currently keeping their head above water is designed, possibly unintentionally, to keep them there.

I for one have been listening to somewhat dumbed down ideas of why poverty exists for as long as I can remember. Most of these notions, sometimes even spewed by economists, fail to take into account that the system is not only corrupt, but also evolved from socio-economic policies that believed that poverty is not just inevitable, but necessary.

No poverty, no work?

There are some economists in history and even some philosophers, who believed adamantly that keeping a percentage of the populous poor was key. This would ensure that they would remain hard workers, since without a need to work they would just stay home and do nothing or worse.

Think about this for a minute, think about how twisted this notion is, the idea that without poverty, without a need for people to work to stay alive, they would just devolve into wickedness and self destructive behaviors. There is possibly no way to state such a dehumanizing lie in a more wretched way.

There's enough

And that is why this subject is currently so important, and so powerful. Because today we don't live in that scarcity of centuries ago, and even though we have been moving the needle in the right direction, there is absolutely no reason why we've not slain the dragon of poverty.

I remember my mother telling me when I was still a child, that the Vatican had enough resources to end world poverty in a split second. I may have been too young to understand economy, and more so logistics of such endeavor, but it made no sense to me back then why the "force for good", chose to not to good, or not do enough.

However, even if we scrap the idea that religious institutions who are supposed to be altruistic, should be altruistic, we still stand in a world of abundance. We've perfected our production of food to the point that it's become cheap in most modern societies and we are now even tackling obesity as a result of this abundance. That being said, the mentality of scarcity is still alive and well, and this is the one monster we've not figured out how to truly kill.

Circling the wagons

But back to my initial idea behind this article. How do we begin to pull people from poverty? Well, it seems obvious to me that the poverty trap must be destroyed, and the system of surveillance that has been edified to make sure that the poorest among us are poor enough to receive help, should altogether be erased from our memory.

Think about the fact that we have all that bureaucratic layers of fat, who's sole task is to make sure that poor people are poor enough, and to punish them by removing aid, if they improve their way of living. If that does not make your stomach ache, then I guess I've failed to deliver the message.

So what's the answer, you ask? It seems to me that Friedman had the best idea out there, and to think that even Nixon wanted to implement it, just baffles my mind a bit. Arguably the worse president the US ever had, almost implemented the solution to poverty.

I realize a good percentage of people recoil to the very idea of UBI, and wrongfully equate the idea with socialism or communism, but have not taken the time to learn that economists like Milton Friedman, considered by many to be a leader of libertarian thought, advocated for it's necessity.

Maybe it's time to scrap the current system after all.