Where Poverty Reigns, the Poor Have No Money

Let’s talk about how money is right up there with water and food when it comes to our top necessities

In an increasingly connected and ever more global society, everyone seems to have an opinion about everything and they’re not afraid to show it. Now that there are easily accessible tools with which people can express themselves at no cost, suddenly everyone is a critic, a philosopher, or a judge.

Take one of the most pressing concerns humankind has yet to combat: poverty. A simple Google search shows what several self-proclaimed theorists believe to be the reason behind it. Some are as bold as to say it simply stems from an inability to create more value than what society consumes (what?). Some stick to the more common answers, such as lack of opportunity, education, social mobility, good parenting, and employment. Others criticize the social net, believing poverty is the effect of insufficient public healthcare, deficient retirement and disability income, lack of shelter, and low wages.

These factors are all related to poverty in one way or another, but maybe the answer is simpler than we may think.

What causes poverty is lack of money.

This may sound obvious — redundant, even — like an oversimplification of a terribly complex problem. But it’s just the opposite. In our capitalist society, money is right up there with water and food when it comes to basic sources of survival. As such, lack of money causes poverty; the rest is just its inbred effects. So, if we treat the cause, could the symptoms gradually begin to disappear?

The political system is armed with the weapons to combat these symptoms, but it does not consider tackling the cause. Why? Maybe because the implementation of a universal basic income would do away with the archaic welfare structure, one that has been in place for more than half a century, one that generates employment and allows for greater control over a country’s citizens.

But what is a universal basic income (UBI), and what justifies its implementation? It is the idea of providing everyone in the country with a regular cash payment that covers an individual’s basic needs. Past research shows that the implementation of this economic model leads to improvements in public health and school performance, increased gender equality, economic growth, and a decline in crime. By lifting people out of the poverty line, a UBI would provide opportunities for those who never had them before, incentivizing creativity, production, and entrepreneurship.

The difference between the current social protection service and the UBI is simple and all boils down to one word: option. The latter gives people the option to choose what they need. They don’t have to subject themselves to what self-opinionated specialists believe they need.

We all know what skeptics say, something off-putting about how poor people will spend their money on drugs and alcohol. Or even worse, that free money makes people lazy. These cultural biases need to be broken, because not living in poverty should be a right granted to all of humanity, as is stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (read Article 25).

Yes, I’m from a country where this belief is ingrained, and not without cause. The world views the Bolsa-Família, one of Brazil’s largest social welfare programs, with googly eyes. But they don’t know much about its more intimate effects. Unfortunately, what followed its execution was the creation of a vicious cycle of dependency and unemployment. That’s because it’s partly founded upon electoral greed and sets poverty conditions its receivers must meet, such as a maximum wage limit. But research shows that a proper UBI system won’t prevent people from seeking employment. Most people want to work if given the proper opportunity. In fact, data show that not having a job leads to great personal dissatisfaction.

When someone lives in poverty, they are forced to focus solely on their short-term needs. They won’t consider seeking education or taking a good sabbatical to apply for a better-earning job with career prospects because long-term thinking is luxury. Economics teaches us that we should consider tendencies in the long-run because that’s when the economy will reach equilibrium. But when you have no means to even consider what is beyond your short-term needs, how are you supposed to abide by such theoretical nonsense?

The poor don’t have an opportunity to think in the long-run and struggle to make ends meet in the short-run.

The social protection system isn’t of much help, either. The state forces the poor to prove their inability to find employment, making them go through hoops in hell, only so that they get to afford food on the table. It’s dehumanizing, anti-ethical, and downright costly for the state. Any willpower this individual once had to pick up his life is burnt by endless hours of form-filling and pointless interviews with social servants. On the false belief that it is providing aid, the state ostracizes him from society. The poor deserve to stop wasting countless hours on a welfare system that only stratifies inequality.

So, isn’t it bizarre that many opinionated fools blame the poor for their own predicaments? Or that some self-proclaimed experts think they know it all when they classify the poor into two piles, the deserving and undeserving poor? First, none of these sentiments will ever aggregate anything to our society. Second, these are ignorant views. Everyone deserves to rise out of poverty and to live a dignifying life. The option is theirs, but, with no means whatsoever, the fight becomes draconian in nature.

For more information on UBI and past research, see Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-hour Workweek (September 2014)