A basic income experiment in Kenya

Re:A basic income experiment in Kenya by AdrianB1 on Monday January 01, 2018 @04:33PM (#16048166)

You cannot ever eliminate poverty because the baseline (definition of poverty) is moving with the results: if poverty was having nothing to eat a few hundred years ago to not able to buy a car every 5 years and have a vacation abroad in our days (this is how it is defined in Europe), then in 200 years not having a hyperspace yacht will be poverty and you will struggle to provide it to everyone. Probably not gonna happen. My grandparents did not have electricity most of their lives and they were considered wealthy - my grandpa did prison time under the communism regime because he was considered a bourgeois (he was a war refugee, but in 10 years of hard work he owned a small mill). Living in their house with electricity would not be enough in our days to be above the poverty line. You are chasing a moving target, tied above your barrel.

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Re:A basic income experiment in Kenya by kragen on Monday January 01, 2018 @11:21PM (#16049850)

No, that isn't what poverty is. Poverty is being at the mercy of people who don't care about you for your necessities to flourish as a human being before you die.

It's true that how much it costs to avoid this — if it can even be avoided with money — depends on where you live; here in Buenos Aires, I don't need a car to get around, because I can take the bus anywhere in the city for €0,44, or a taxi for perhaps €8 if I'm in a hurry. There are plenty of cultural events that are free or very cheap. When I lived in the US, I had to have a car, and that was more expensive. (I did try commuting by bicycle and public transport, but it wasn't very practical.) Public universities here are free, but few people can afford the time off work to study.

Poverty is vulnerability. Poverty is helplessness. Poverty is weakness. Poverty is not a lack of money; it is a consequence of a lack of money in a money-driven society.

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