Can poverty be eliminated?

Our local paper reported on a visit from university students at a local college where discussions centered around the pressures of maintaining good health in our county. The social worker spoke about someone with no electricity, water, toilet, heat, or lock on the door, without food and shunned, pushed to the fringes of society by the locals, a fitting description of a big city homeless person, but also of someone with a real address and paying property taxes in our area. Stunning? You bet.

There are additional problems in our area. Health care is now more centralized and people do not only have to go great distances just to get to local health care but major distances for specialized care. Our county is a very large geographical area of rocks, mountainous, with limited access roads and where at least a quarter of the population is over 65. There are not enough doctors up here. I do not have a doctor either. If I need one I have to wait for hours in emergency until someone looks at my situation.

In another article the paper's editor poses the question "how do we solve poverty", but she only points out the situation from another angle, the impact of poverty on children, young people, families and the old, on socially divined incomes that are insufficient for health or reasonable comfort. She mentions safety-nets such as low cost rides and other low cost assistance, but that is not solving poverty. Often even the low cost is prohibitive to the elderly and the poor.

I believe the wealth of baby boomers is seriously overrated. Even people who made really good money in the 1960s to 1990s could not possibly accumulate enough wealth for their retirement at present prices unless they had someone doing an exceptional job of investing for them. That possibly happened to only a very few. The Internet did not exist for most people until the late 1990s especially commercially.

I was introduced to the computer and Internet when I was at university in the early 1990s and I was in my 50s but I had no time or money to invest in building an Internet business. My husband had a great job that was very strenuous but the more he earned the more the taxman took and the rest went into a farm where we lived. I worked my butt off as long as I could with custom work for other farmers, driving school bus, working weekends at a local resort, gardening, harvesting and canning everything in sight, baking for others, making my own butter and cottage cheese, looking after livestock, etc. In the end we both ended up "cripples" my husband with emphesema, I with injuries that converted into arthritis. When the farm was sold, I was already living with my parent's because my Dad died and Mom needed help. My husband ended up getting swindeled and after his death everyone ended up with nothing except some more bills to pay. The latest statement regarding funds available to me on my old-age pension is $36/mo.

I hear over and over again that children move back home because they cannot make ends meet and parents move in with grandparents because the old folks need help. That leaves often the children to earn enough money to supplement the pensions of the old folks to keep the whole family fed and housed. Most of the time the parents were split through divorce and it is only mom who looks after the young and the old with a great big inferiority complex because she is the one living on the generosity of the old and the young without self-determination or recognition by society.

What is wrong with this picture? In the bible it says that the poor would be with us always: Matt:26:11. There are many reasons why there are poor people, due to war, adversity in business or job, bad judgment, being born poor and growing up with poor health, lack of help when needed, lack of the education right for that person... I read a book at university that pointed out that there were 7 kinds of "smart". We all know that some of the richest people in the world hardly made it past grade 5. There are some people who are better at educating themselves at home or on the job than in the classroom. There is very little provision to help young people who get lost in the formal school curriculum.

But you can be educated to the hilt and still not get a job because you are too ugly, too fat, too old, over qualified. There are thousands of excuses. It is really amazing how government agencies are trying to help those in wheelchairs and those who are mentally challenged, at least they are trying, but then someone who struggled to improve their health to get out of a wheelchair gets criticized. My oldest daughter ended up severely mutilated and crippled after an infection of bacterial meningitis. She was told she would never walk again. Well, she walks with a crutch and constant pain and pain pills. She needs a good diet. She is badly scarred and her teeth died. Her feet are twisted because some tendons were accidentally cut off. She gets a small disability pension but is expected to work. Nobody wants her. A local business owner told her flat out that she was "an eye-sore".

Yes, there are people who are scared to get a job. I tried to help a girl once who was on social assistance. She had epilepsy and was worried that if she earned money at a job which required her to be a self-starter and therefore not secure with a regular income, social services would take away her government income which gave her a little security. And they do. You may only add a very small amount of extra income before you are penalized with deductions.

In the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are laws given to the ancient Israelites before they took over the new land into which God led them. God is an equal opportunity landlord and he gave all his people property. But over time for various reasons some became poor. The haves were told not to oppress the have-nots but give food, shelter, and money unstintingly without pay or interest. Relatives were also encouraged to redeem those who had fallen into debt. In order to equalize all outrageous trading, every 50 years all properties were returned to the original owners and all debts cancelled. Now wouldn't that throw a real hook into our economies? But it certainly encouraged fairness among all people.

I know that such measures are not realistic today where all lenders require higher interests and fees of those who have less than from those who have so much they do not know what to do with it all, unless everyone adhered to them voluntarily. But giving more and generously of the necessities of life is definitely important for anyone who is making more money than he or his decendants need to live well. I also appreciate the effort by some on the net to over-deliver or literally benefactor people into a business and hold their hands until they can manage on their own. It would be great if there was more of that in the brick and mortar world as well.

Some efforts are made locally through adult education and co-op training. However there are precious few jobs and most of them are seasonal. Our youth is walking the streets and crime abounds. There are almost no good, educational, free activities for young people. Housing is very expensive and almost non-existant. They are working on it, but it takes time. There is a foodbank but it cannot supply enough and quality food. I want to help, but I need to make money to have the means to help. Of those who can help the bible promises: "II Corinthians 9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver."

Go see if it is so: Find a bible online and read these chapters yourself or here is access to the New World Translation. Have a great day!

adult education, baby boomers, centralized healthcare, distance, doctors, foodbank, free, giving, healthcare, help, job, no interest, poor, poverty