The solution to poverty is to end the rule of the wealthy elites through the state and the establishment of society based on the ancient principles of equality of rights and a sharing economy, in which the producers of wealth (Adam Smith traced all wealth back to labor, including capital), the workers, own and control the means of production.
The extreme poverty of today is a result of both the means of production being owned by private interests and the financialization of capitalism which does not produce wealth but extracts it from others.
The solution to crime takes us back to 99% of our human history, in which there is no evidence of violence among the early communities, which were egalitarian and sharing. Of thousands of archeologic studies of prehistoric sites, only in one case hs evidence of violence been seen, and this in a group that died 10,000 years ago, leading to the possibility that it was not other "hunter/gatherer" tribes that did the violence but early agricultural societies, where surplus, class, hierarchy, and violence arose from settled communities.
For this reason, I suggest that poverty is the result of a system of wealth extraction which leads to ever increasing inequality and poverty.
Many agencies tel
l us that poverty is down, but the facts say otherwise: poverty in rich nations is increasing but on a global scale, 65 billionaires have more wealth than 3 billion people who live on less than a few dollars a day and live an abject poverty unknown in the old world. A thousand years ago, Africa, India, China, et al were prosperous but fell into poverty with the advent of colonialism. Poverty is a modern creation, the result of a system dedicated to extracting wealth in a pyramid of inequality. It is a form of social cancer that arose only lately.
I say we repeal capitalism, which is destroying the earth, and lose our shackles by taking down the bloated rich and creating a society based on the principle on which our nation was founded (but immediately betrayed), that "all men are created equal." These words were written by one of the largest slave owners in America (only 38 had slave holdings as large as Jefferson, including Washington and Andrew Jackson).....thus setting up centuries of hypocrisy. It's time to face and undo the hypocrisy and finally fulfill the principles of the Declaration of Independence and set up a nation based on equality. A good starting point is the ignored classic of Tom Paine, Agrarian Justice, in which he outlines a 3d way between state socialism (Hegel) and capitalism (Smith), which in the end are no different with a tiny elite controlling the economy. Paine's view, which is shared by Jefferson, is that the natural resources on which wealth is built (the fertility of the soil the rivers, the mineral wealth, the forests, etc) is not created or built by anyone and therefore belongs to humanity as a whole.
This is the Commons that the aristocracy (which the US rebelled to overthrow), destroyed with the Enclosure Laws by which the forests and natural wealth of England were fenced off, the forests cut down, and the formerly free yeomen who had been allowed to take food, fuel, and building materials from the Commons under the rule of "no hoarding" (Take only what you need.) were forced to become slave labor for the aristocrats who had stolen their Commons. Their young children were also forced into labor, and and soon, when the wealth of the Commons had been stripped, these formerly free people were forced into the infernos of the factories, along with their young children, forced to work 12 hrs a day in unhealthy conditions and forced into cramped, depressing housing.
And if worker chose to quit,he would have to leave behind his starving family and become a vagabond, which the aristocrats, to lock in their labor force, made a crime. The Vagabond Act of 1572 stated: " Any unlicensed vagabonds were to be whipped and burned through the ear." Wiki reports:
" During the Tudor period it is estimated that up to a third of the population lived in poverty.The population doubled in size ....The earliest Tudor Poor Laws were very much focused on punishing beggars and vagabonds to deter idleness." This was the tool to force workers to stay the course. Slavery has many forms.
"The 1531 Vagabonds Act mandated that only licensed beggars could beg legally. Justices of the Peace had the power to license the "impotent" poor to beg. In practice, this meant that only the elderly and disabled could beg and also prevented the able-bodied from begging. A few years later, the 1536 Act for Punishment of Sturdy Vagabonds and Beggars was passed. This more severe law stated that those caught outside of their parish without work would be punished by being whipped through the streets. If caught a second time they could lose an ear and if caught a third time they could be executed." Wiki
Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual Enclosure Acts were put into place, enclosing 6.8 million acres The earliest Enclosure laws started at the time of the Poor Laws, as the purpose of the poor laws was to force people to work for the aristocrats and then the new capitalists.
"(Enclosure was accomplished ) ... by passing laws causing or forcing enclosure, such as Parliamentary enclosure. The latter process of enclosure was sometimes accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit."
Trump: "I will build a wall." Below, the Israel Wall of Separation.
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