If you’re talking world wide you could give everyone on earth that is currently in poverty about $1200. That’s enough to help a great deal in poor countries, but it would be very temporary. If you’re talking just the USA, you’d be giving everyone in poverty $30k. That would certainly keep people out of poverty for a while. But under capitalism where people have to work many would be back in poverty in a year. Cash infusion would only work if it was permanent like a UBI.
Even if you spent that money to build free housing all over the country, it wouldn’t be enough to end poverty, though that would probably be the best use of the money. Just flood the market with housing availability and living gets way cheaper.
You could eliminate a bunch of systemic issues with a trillion dollars that would amount to essentially ending many of the effects of poverty for most people in poverty I would think.
Things like food insecurity, shelter, etc.
You’re right that just spending a trillion dollars as a one off grant to everyone in poverty wouldn’t do much, though. It’d need to be used strategically.
It’s the covid checks versus the infrastructure bill lmao. Should we give everyone $1200 or like build roads that everyone uses. Clearly one has long term economic impacts and one has short term economic impacts.
Same with how you acquire the money. Raising annual taxes vs civil forfeiture. All this shit is just a distraction from turning the tax system upside down and not relying on the poor/middle class to fund profits for the .01%
TronBronson@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I mean yes if we as individuals go out and spend said money immediately on food it’s not going to last long. But if a village put their $1200 together to build critical infrastructure they could make life much better with their share. It’s like a government spending program or something!