Eradicating poverty is the most popular excuse for the expansion of government power. It’s a crisis! Someone must do something! How can a civilized people allow their fellow humans to go hungry?

The statistics on global poverty are staggering. According to the United Nations Millennium Project, there are currently 1.2 billion people living in poverty. Fifty thousand deaths per day occur worldwide as a result of poverty. Every year more than ten million children die of hunger and preventable diseases. More than half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day and 800 million people go to bed hungry every night.

As a result of the constant drumbeat to “do something,” there are countless efforts underway to focus attention on poverty and pull at our heartstrings to just sacrifice a little more, for the good of humanity. We are all in this together, goes the guilt trip to “take action today!” Poverty reduction targets have been set. International goals have been announced. Deadlines have been determined. Agreement that poverty must be eradicated has been reached by every national leader in the world.

What is the government’s most preferred way to eliminate poverty? Redistribution of wealth. It’s the force behind the UN’s Agenda 2030 and its drive for social justice. In fact, redistribution schemes are the common excuse behind nearly every government poverty program as well as most private charitable programs.

Billions of dollars have been sucked from the pockets of citizens by way of taxes, always under the altruistic excuse of helping the poor. Poverty program schemes are all the same — tax money from the producers and give that money to the non-producers. Yet, as billions of dollars are taken for the “cause”, poverty steadily increases. Little progress, if any, has been achieved as poverty continues to escalate. In fact, there is an ever-growing disparity between rich and poor.

The entire world is now under the control of powerful national and international forces such as the United Nations, World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Economic Forum (WEF), promising a better life for all and the annihilation of poverty if only we give them more power and control of our land, food supply, energy policy, and our money.

Combined with over 20,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), these forces claim that only they can solve the misery of poverty worldwide. Their solutions, which grant them more power, simply respond to the visual effects of poverty such as starvation, ignorance, and poor health.

None of their efforts address the basic reason why poverty exists in the first place. In not one of their documents calling for the eradication of poverty is there an advocacy to help the poor help themselves, such as to own private property. A study of economics reveals that the inability to own private property creates poverty. It is also a fact that confiscation of private property never helps to eradicate poverty. As a result, rather than easing the situation, the number of poor continues to grow by design.

Most of the current anti-poverty efforts focus on redistributing funds from wealthier nations to poorer ones, primarily through mandatory taxation. This system ignores the fact that tomorrow the poor need to be fed again. Taxpayers are forced to dig into their own funds again and again to help. The process is repeated daily, each time the poor recipient is only temporarily helped, as the taxpayers become poorer themselves.

Meanwhile, as massive funds are moved in and out of governments, ever-growing bureaucracies are institutionalized to run the system. Eventually, more money goes to feed the machinery of poverty than actually gets into the hands of the intended poor. Such a system deliberately sustains poverty rather than eradicating it. As a result of never-ending regulations, truly private charities, those which really do help care for the poor through voluntary donations, are put out of business. Over-taxed citizens stop donating and simply shrug, saying I’m already paying government to take care of those people.

In short, no matter how much is taxed and spent to eradicate the problem, the result is that we have more poor! In truth, the promise of eradicating poverty is a growth industry – the “Compassion Cartel.” The more poverty in the world, the more powerful and rich the Cartel becomes. What possible incentive does it have to actually stop poverty?

August 30, 2024

© 2024 Tom DeWeese – All Rights Reserved

~ The Author ~
Thomas A. DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center.

Tom is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence.

Tom DeWeese’s commentaries may not be reprinted or republished without permission. All Rights Reserved. Submitted to and published by Kettle Moraine, Ltd. by arrangement, and with permission of the author.