POVERTY

Lack (of anything, but mostly money)

Poverty (‘pobreza’ in spanish) is a lack of money, wealth, income, possessions, property, resources, assets, wage, salary…resulting in a lower standard of living, usually unhappiness, and things like suffering, poor health, poor prospects of upward mobility for yourself or your children, hunger, homelessness, unfulfillment, feeling inferior, lower life expectancy, greater vulnerability to things like crime or exploitation, feelings of anomie and meaninglessness and going nowhere as a wage-slave running on a treadmill in dead-end jobs, dependency on charity, alcoholism drugs and addiction, incarceration, less fun like vacations or nice stuff/things/toys, struggle to rise in status, perhaps giving up, or constant seeking of betterment and greater comfort, and of course, exhaustion.

Ideally, everyone would have all their basic needs met, and be happy, and live long lives, content and fulfilled.  Basic needs like food, water, clothing, shelter, healthcare, relationships, sanitation, heating, cooling, electricity, sewage, and (for me, anyway) things like libraries.

But there are different types of poverty.   Absolute poverty is the abject, dire, squalid depth of unmet basic need to keep the human organism alive.  Luckily, that is rare, these days.  Extreme poverty is at or below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day.   This is roughly one American dollar per day.  80% of the world lived in these conditions in 1800.  670m people in 2022 are living in extreme poverty, says an internet source.  Burundi is the poorest country.   It is economically unstable, with political unrest, and is characterized mainly by subsistence agriculture.   The GDP per capita in USD there is $259.03 for the year 2022.   Does that make you feel better?

What makes people feel worse, or RELATIVELY poor, is the comparison and contrast with others, especially people around them, in their time and place, who are better off, or even in some cases LIGHT YEARS better off, in terms of inequality and keeping up with the Jones’.   So poverty is usually understood intuitively as more of a lack of financial resources and essentials for a standard of living, versus an inability to survive.  That doesn’t make the effects of poverty any less real.  1/3 of deaths worldwide are a result of poverty-related causes.  Americans believe everyone is born equal, but billionaire Bezos vs. bums??  It’s too much.

Poverty breakdown:  

10% of the world earns less than $1.90/d

   (similar statistic: 9.2% of humanity -719m- lives on < $2.15/d)

2/3 less than $10/d

85% less than $30/d

     

In 2022, 12.4% of Americans lived in poverty

(i’m not sure what that figure means, actually)

Wait, here it is:  The percentage of persons who fall below 50% of a country’s median income.   MS is the worst, at 18.7% (Mississippi).   The black poverty rate has decreased.

Poverty measurement (and alleviation) requires definitions, lines, thresholds, and creative thinking.   Then again, the whole world is already doing almost nothing else than trying to make a buck, it seems.  Making paper, dead prez, dolla dolla billz y’all.  Gotta buy bling and make it rain at the club or whatever, dawg.   The quality of life is subjective, but earning sustenance through grind and tedium doesn’t pair well with conspicuous consumption, waste, and mansions, helicopters, yachts, and supercars.

Other types of poverty are situational, generational, rural, urban.   Dimensions of poverty include: nutrition, housing, education, clothing, information access, leisure, social participation, and utilities.  Synonyms for poverty include: penury, privation, impoverished, impecunious, hardship, destitution, indigence, pauper, beggar, bankrupt, insolvent.   Other definitions include, 1. Inferior quality or insufficient quantity, or 2. A renunciation, as part of a religious vow, of one’s right to ownership of property.    Synonyms for shantytown include, favela, slum, ghetto, hood, run-down neighborhood, wrong side of the tracks, tenements, projects, skid row.

Fun fact:  In 2016, 62% of Africa’s population was living in shantytowns (!!!).

Economists, the economics they study and create, and the economies they shape, are vital to our world.   Everything is economic, basically.  Corporations.  Third world countries.  A study even said poverty changes children’s personalities.  Decreased poverty leads to decreased violence.  The world’s ability to EAT:   “approximately 42% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded”  (soil exhaustion and water resource depletion, from unsustainable practices like tillage or overgrazing).  The ‘poverty cycle’ describes a trap of inherited generational poverty from a complex self-reinforcing mechanism of persistence.  3/4 of the poor today are farmers.  The “poverty-industrial complex” describes for-profit companies taking on the roles of government agencies.  Aporophobia is the fear or hostility toward poor people.   The poor are often thought of as lazy, wasters, losers, or scammers.  And the rich as industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic, and the drivers of economic success.  The truth is the poor are overwhelmingly born into poverty, or thrust into it by circumstances beyond their control.   Circumstances like disability (physical or mental), divorce, job market discrimination, unlivable wages, family breakdown, illness, or old age).    Children are twice as likely to die of poverty than adults.  War, which can level cities, can also stimulate innovation and invention.

So many factors figure into individual and societal poverty.  Good governance, minimum corruption, geopolitics, macroeconomics, global warming/climate change (whatever you want to call it), environmental degradation, plastic pollution, overfishing, sustainable development goals, technology, charity, activism, greed and selfishness and materialism, war….  From the stock market as an aggregate of millions of decisions to the effect of a single individual, wealth and poverty hinges on all of us.   Capitalism emphasizes looking out for number one, and trying to be self-reliant.   But we’re all in this together, and we need to help each other out, if we’re a community, a society that cares.  Greed may be good, but so is charity.   Done well, intelligently.  Things like opportunity cost, and cost-benefit analysis, and advertisements that target specific demographics with psychology to manipulate the vulnerable.   Debt relief.  A Universal Basic Income.   The Protestant work-ethic (and COJCOLDS, and Japanese, etc.).  Recessions and Depressions put the Eek! In economics.   The nature of the economy is psychological, to a very large extent.  The outlook for the future.   Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?  (as if the president controls the economy!).  Jesus said, “the poor will always be with us.”   I believe in the Housing First policy-  So hopefully the homeless won’t!

tentative constellation of 5 policy solutions:  1. Housing First, 2. UBI, 3. efficient food pantries/ food banks, that redistribute unpurchased food, and less food waste, 4. free healthcare, and 5. opportunity.    Plus, some philosophy:  Redefine "success" as personal fulfillment, not merely prosperity and riches.  Less alienation, isolation, loneliness - and more community, interaction, social engagement.  Less atomization and more association.  Getting a job you like should be easy.   As my friend Kelli says, "it's a job getting a job."