The United States fixed poverty over 250 years ago. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the fact that the world’s poorest have long made the U.S. their destination not to attain security or handouts, but to find the work necessary to permanently escape poverty.
The U.S. as a magnet for the world’s poorest is an answer to Joe Rogan’s comment from one of his recent podcasts. Rogan asked his guest and viewers to “imagine how much less crime there would be if no one was ever starving.” The easy and true response is that there wouldn’t be any less crime. But as evidenced by Rogan’s comment, he disagrees.
While it would be silly and simplistic to suggest as CNN did that Rogan had unwittingly revealed “socialist” tendencies, the podcaster did say that to solve poverty you would have to get those “rich people that are in charge of industry and running corporations and government to agree to make the world a better place for everybody.” Implied in Rogan’s commentary is that money, or more of it directed from the rich to the poor, would solve the hunger problem on the path to less crime. The bet here is that Rogan could be convinced otherwise.
No doubt it’s true that redistribution of wealth would put money in people’s pockets, and would by extension put food in their mouths and roofs over their heads. At least for a time.
Why the qualifier? It’s essential as a reminder that poverty isn’t an effect of a lack of money. See the arrival of the world’s poorest yet again to the United States.
In most instances, they’ve historically reached the U.S. with little to nothing. But they didn't remain penniless. Which is an assertion vivified by the routine arrival of immigrants to the U.S.
If their poverty remained a persistent definer of their condition upon reaching the United States, then they wouldn’t come here en masse to begin with. What would be the point?
Again, the U.S. is where people with nothing migrate to so that they can attain something (and more) through hard work. It’s a reminder that poverty doesn't spring from little or no money, it's instead an effect of a lack of personal and economic freedom.
Thought of in terms of the desperately poor who make their way stateside, they have rich people values regardless of their financial condition. That’s why they’re here. They want better for themselves, they know they can get better for themselves, and they’ll do any and all work necessary to get better. Again, rich people values.
To which some will say immigrants are here for handouts over work, but if they were they would remain forever poor regardless of the money handed to them. That’s because money can’t fix what is a problem of values.
Good values, rich people values can be found in a willingness to travel long distances for better opportunity, including opportunity that most Americans would turn their noses up to. Which is how we know immigrants aren’t showing up for handouts. If they were, they would still be poor and the U.S. the opposite of a magnet for the world’s poorest.
It’s something to remember as we contemplate immigration, but also Rogan’s arguably taken-out-of-context commentary on poverty. It decidedly is not an effect of a lack of money as the arrival of the poor to the U.S. continues to remind us. Poverty is what’s individually inside us, as is criminal activity. Money can fix neither.
