What is your solution to poverty in America?

Question

There are many ways that the poor are provided for. However, we need more solutions. There are still many people suffering from poverty. If you were the President of the United States what would you do to provide for the poor?

What kind of law could be enacted to provide for the poor?

Having compassion for the poor is the way it is supposed to be. The only alternative is selfishness, self-centeredness, and greed. If everyone cared about the suffering of other human beings, there wouldn't need to be laws enacted.

Note: I am not poor. This is a general question, not a personal one.

Thank you in advance for your answers. I have great respect for the many people who share their intelligence in this forum.

Answer 1

All liberals should donate 1/2 their paychecks to the unfortunate!! Then they could back up their whining with action!

Answer 2

depends on what you mean by poor. do you mean homeless, or the legions of "working poor" in America. helping the working poor is easier; the homeless more difficult.

First; cut income and wage taxes to zero and raise benefits (food stamps, health care/clinics, etc) for people that make $10,000 or less individually or $20,000 for a family of 3 or greater.

Second; educationally based incentives for federal tuition that exceed those we now have. this encourages people with natural talent or that are hard working to get out of the lowest economic brackets despite low/no taxes.

Third; increased taxes on the ultra wealthy and corporations to pay for 1 and 2.

you may say this is a communistic approach but it isn't. Communism advocates everyone having equal shares of the nations wealth. under a more fair system than predatory capitalism its OK for some to be rich and many to be poor--but in a country as rich as America NOONE should be without basic needs. if that means taking a piece from the wealthy to ensure that everyone has food and shelter as long as they are working, then so be it. in a capitalist free market country there is absolutely NO WAY to avoid a long term progression towards fewer and fewer individuals owning more and more of the societies wealth over time. the only way is to, in some form or another "redistribute" some of that wealth. Capitalism is the science of inequality, Democracy is the belief in equality of all. the two do not naturally mix.

Answer 3

The answer is freedom. Let them be responsible for their own fate. The government can't guarantee wealth for everyone (in fact governments can't guarantee anything). But the promise that he can and must, keeps the people from facing their problems and solve them.

Unfortunately, many decades of socialist politics have created a huge group of people that depends, in full or in part, on the government support (the taxpayers' money). The solution is to set a progressive reduction of the support, eliminate all restriction to employment (minimum fare, etc) and commerce (price control, subsidies, etc), eliminate social health care, reduce the government by eliminating all department others than the administration of the res publica (including a plan to reduce it to the minimum) and (fast) progressive reduction of taxes to a "per service" basis where only services provided by the administration of the res publica (local, state or federal) can be taxed and that's the only income allowed to the government.

There's no enough space here to describe a whole plan but that's the basic idea. It sounds callous because it's like abandoning the poor. But that's not the case. The kind of poor we're talking about was created by the socialist system. Is someone being supported by the system in a way he doesn't have to do anything to survive. No need to improve, no incentive to progress. In fact, he ends up being worth less than the money he gets from the government and less than minimum wage. How can you create a job position for him?

To make matters worse, it's the part of the population that grows the most. Eventually, you get two different worlds, one creating wealth to support the other. But the one creating wealth gets smaller and smaller meaning that more has to take from them to support the other. This is what's called social justice, ironic, isn't it?

No political group is really working to solve this because this problem is the main source of income for them. The political system lives trying to solve this problem throwing more money at it and keeping its share on the way. And it's the money of the working class, because there's no other money.

The libertarian movement is the closer we have right now to the solution of this problem. And, as its organized expression, the libertarian party (though they're easily bent into accepting the rules of socialism to avoid being vanished from the political scene... big mistake in the long run).

Answer 4

I do my best to avoid being poor. In the process, I earn money, much of which is siphoned off by the government and some of that is rather inefficiently given to poor people. That's the best I can do as an individual, since avoiding poverty - including avoiding it after I retire - takes all the money I'm allowed to keep (and then some).

Were I not taxed so heavily to cover transfer payments, I might well be inclined to give more to charities to help the poor - and, for that matter, there might be fewer poor people in need of help, as you wouldn't have the cycles of dependency that entitlements create.

In any case, whether one is compasionate or selfish is a matter for personal conscience, not government control.


Given unlimitted executive authority, I'd probably be very pragmatic about eliminating poverty. The key, in my mind, is to encourage the poor to have fewer children and the rich more. Tax breaks could accomplish the former quite handily, and any of a variety of incentives could accomplish the latter. Mind you, I'm not saying sterilize the poor, I'm just saying give them incentives to have only one kid, and put thier effort into bettering that kid's life, rather than having many to get a bigger check.

Answer 5

The president of the United States is usually only concerned with poverty in the United States, poverty in America is usually not something the United Statesian president addresses.

Laws to eliminate poverty? that sounds like socialism not about to take hold in the US.

The best a president can do to alleviate poverty is improve education. If instead of spending 400 billion in the occupation of Iraq this president would've spent half of that in United Statesian education and the other half in helping poor nations around the world we would have a billion friends all over the world and be much much better off at home.

Answer 6

A number of people on here have mentioned free education as a way to solve the problem, but that is not the real problem. I attended school with plenty of poorer kids who got a free education in college because they did well in high school. What we need to do with our education programs at the state level is make the system more merit-based. Give more students an incentive to work hard by making state grants merit-based.

This will spark the desire to climb out of the pits of poverty and encourage the development of a society based on merit instead of blank handouts. Education is key, but we should not blindly give money away unless people show they want to use it wisely and advance themselves.

Answer 7

It's too bad you think selfishness is not good for the poor.
You would find, that if you did better for yourself...you could not avoid doing better for those around you.
If you wanted to get rich, you would invest in, or start a business.
That business would likely hire employees.
Those employees would earn money to buy a home, or a new car.

If you were rich, you would probably hire someone to tend your lawn, and someone to help with the housekeeping.

That housekeeper might decide to take on other clients and start her own business.

There is so much good that would come to society by just doing better for yourself. Too many of us simply resent those that elevate themselves, rather than question what we are doing to improve.

Answer 8

Eliminating poverty is impossible. Every civilization since the dawn of Humanity has dealt with poverty. The best solution would be on a community level. If you see a family in need, help them.

Answer 9

Reduce taxes and government spending. Unemployment well decrease even more than the historically record low 4.5% that it now is. But actually it sounds as though you do not understand that although there are poor people it's true, the average American is more wealthy today than anytime in history.

Answer 10

My solution would be to provide them with training in useful skills, so that they can help themselves not be poor any more, then provide some hefty tax breaks for "quality job" businesses to locate and hire near poor areas. Help them help themselves. If they don't want to do that, then they can remain poor forever.

Answer 11

James Madison Stood on the floor of the house and said
I cannot undertake to lay my finger
on that article of the Constitution
which granted a right to Congress of expending,
on the objects of benevolence,
the money of their constituents."
James Madison
its not the job of Government 2 provide this stuff its just that the church no longer does it :)