Poverty isn't hard to solve because "society needs it" but because it is a statistically likely outcome. If you live in a world where everyone has $100, and every day, each person randomly gives $1 to a random another person, you end up with a highly unequal society within a year.

I mean it's necessary to have some system to allocate jobs and resources. Someone has to do the shit work, and someone has to do the easy work, and there are jobs that it's probably not worth paying someone properly to do in their current form.

Periodically I like to imagine how much it would cost for someone doing a traditionally low paid job to get paid a wage I would accept and if I'd still consider the service worth it. Crunch some numbers on how much housecleaning would cost if each worker had to get paid $100,000 annually with 10 days PTO and weekends (or two other days weekly) off working 8 hour days, or gardening, or childcare.

The OPM from the US government is defined as a relative wealth function, so technically it has to exist. Also you can compare the standard of living of someone above the poverty line in 1910 vs someone below the poverty line 2010, and 99% of people wouldn't trade places. Access to running water, toilets, air conditioning TV, Internet, mobile phones, etc makes life a lot better than what we called middle class 100 years ago. [source https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-c... ]

It's all relative and as long it's relative, mathematically speaking poverty has to exist.

Do we have a definition for "has stable access to basic necessities"? In 2025 I'd call this healthy varied food, private sheltered sleeping space that's protected from extreme temperature, clean water to drink and bathe, Internet, public outdoor recreation space, health care, at least a day off a week and let's say 5 days combined PTO or vacation, enough extra to cover emergencies, and enough left over to slowly save for retirement or education or retraining or other opportunities.

I don't know, I'm probably missing some things and possibly parts of my definition is excessive? But I'd be curious to see how that would change trends.

Poverty must exist for capitalist societies to function, yes.