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61. "It is important for us to understand the causes of poverty."



No. There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state, that which happens when you don't do anything. If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come. To ask what causes poverty is like asking what causes cold in the universe; it is the absence of energy. Similarly poverty is the absence of wealth. For most of humanity's existence on this planet, poverty has been the norm, the natural condition. People hunted to survive or lived by subsistence farming, and they were poor. In some parts of the world this is still the case.



The unusual condition is wealth. This is what changes things. We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them. When you ask the wrong question, "What causes poverty," you end up with wrong answers. People fall into the trap of thinking that the wealth of some causes the poverty in others, as if there were a fixed amount of wealth in the world and that rich people had seized too large a share of it.



In fact wealth is created, and it is only during the last 250 years or so that we have found how to do this on a grand scale. Wealth is created by production and enterprise, by the specialization of labour, and most of all it is created by exchange. Instead of trying to take wealth away from rich people and redistribute it, we should be seeking to implement the conditions in which as many people as possible can join in the wealth-creating process for themselves.



Poor countries will not become wealthier because we give them some of our riches. They will climb out of poverty the same way we did, by producing and selling goods and services and by creating wealth in the process.

potential output (also referred to as "natural real gross domestic
product") refers to the highest level of real Gross Domestic Product output that can be sustained over the long term.

Japan and Germany, economies which have had great success in developing new technology despite low military spending compared to nations like the United States

ignores what the baker would have bought had he not been forced to buy a new window

Military Keynesianism is a government economic policy in which the government devotes large amounts of spending to the military in an effort to increase economic growth.

increased military demand for goods and services is generated directly by government spending

this direct spending induces a multiplier effect of general consumer spending

military might act as an employer of last resort

military spending on research and development (R&D) increases the productivity of the civilian sector by generating new infrastructure and advanced technology.

cycle of constant war and continually high military spending.

It requires high levels of taxation to fund military spending, and that taxation must come from the productive sectors in the economy, thus being a long term drag on economic growth

policies are no longer viable for developed countries because military strength is now built on high-technology professional armies

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” — Dom Helder Camara

Today we know that corporations, for good or bad, are major influences on our lives. For example, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations while only 49 are countries, based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs (See the facts page for more examples). In this era of globalization, marginalized people are becoming especially angry at the motives of multinational corporations, and corporate-led globalization is being met with increasing protest and resistance. How did corporations ever get such power in the first place?