And yet we have such terrible poverty.
When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simplest thing. Space. Some space to fucking sleep and live.
How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis than we find in jammed up dense countries like Singapore, South Korea, and India?
Why hasn't the market solved this problem?
Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures.
There is space enough in American cities if density is allowed to be increased. In other words if these fake "liberal" NIMBYs in American cities can be persuaded to give up the precious "character" of their neighborhoods, we can make space for everyone. CHEAP space.
Poverty is the inability to know how or be able to survive at a minimum comfortable level in our society.
The causes are many, such as lack of education, addiction, early parenthood, good role models, lack of good health and many more I can't even begin to imagine.
So giving people stuff and housing is only a temporary solution. The solution is so much more and it takes years to get ahead of it.
Look at Venezuela, they tried to solve their poverty problem very simply by basically giving people food and shelter without fixing the fundamental problem of lack of knowledge and the other problems that cause poverty and now they are in worst trouble than ever and yet in theory they had the financial resources to fix the problem.
What you mention is just a start and poverty will always be unless the more fundamental problems are fixed.
I’m sorry I can’t give you a better answer being on my phone.
But, Venezuela’s current crisis has about as little to do with commoners working as you could find in a modern-day country. As a small example, how would the arrival of a new president fit into your (kind of derogatory) theory? What evidence do you have for your assertion?
Hugo Chávez was brought to power by direct mandate of the underrepresented poor. He nationalized many industries which included the country's oil assets.
He used them to create large-scale social programs to help the poor. It seemed like a great success but once oil prices collapsed the whole situation fell apart because the fundamental problems with poverty were never addressed and we see the result now. An economy that's in chaos. The poor are in worst shape than when Chávez was elected. Not only do they not have what they need but now they have a president, Maduro, that's not fixing the problems because it helps him stay in power by blaming the problems on other sources other than his government.
Poverty can't just be fixed by giving people things. I don't know the answer but it starts by making sure everyone knows how to make a living in the society they live in. Yes, there's a fraction of the people that will never be able to get out and those are the ones you help with food, shelter and whatever else they need but you hope that that's a small minority of the segment.
There are no simple answers.