There have long been simple answers but we have been to greedy to look at them. We have been able to eradicate hunger, homelessness and educational poverty for a long time. We have just chosen not to.

I find it funny that so many people are terrified of being capped to $20M/person and so few are concerned about children sleeping outside, hungry.

Yes these problems have been solvable for some time, but it’s not billionaires stopping that happening. Their job is creating companies, jobs, products and services not ending poverty. We have the resources in the public purse already. Richard Nixon came very close to announcing a basic income.

The problem is political. Too many Marxist on the left that are economically illiterate and don’t know how wealth works or even what it is (hint it’s not piles of money); and too many radical libertarians on the right that think western European style liberal welfare is communism.

They're being asked to pay their fair share of taxes and instead are using their wealth to find loopholes so that they pay nothing. The US has regressive taxation.

> Too many Marxists on the left...

I'm not sure that there really are any Marxists on the left and that's certainly not what's holding back addressing poverty. Neither of the groups you mentioned have any real political power.

No, the political center has the power, and it's that center which has moved right to be more concerned with protecting wealth than helping the poorest, at least in America. As you said, Richard Nixon considered UBI and Milton Friedmann was quite clear about the need for a negative income tax. That was the right; now that's the radical left. See the problem?

I honestly didn't mean to start a fire with my first statement above. I'm saying that the wealth inequality gap is disastrously large and growing. The wealthiest, much like before the French Revolution, both won't pay taxes and frankly don't care how much poverty exists. And that's unacceptable. We should be talking about that and nothing else.

I have to say, I’m not entirely convinced by the growing wealth gap argument. Pickety’s numbers are all before taxes and transfers, there are huge holes in the analysis. On the other hand, there are too many renty ways to grow wealth. I believe the right approach is to recalibrate taxation and the incentive system, not just slap huge punitive taxes on top of what’s already there.